Is Your Limbic Brain Throwing a Tantrum? with Dr. Jenny Tufenkian

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This connects back with that limbic brain that's always surveying
for safety and danger. And we know that limbic brain
can go into a dysfunctional state when people are chronically ill,
and it can become a vicious cycle of how we
stay physically sick because this limbic brain is out of
whack from all the stress it is perceiving from the

(00:25):
outside and the inside of the body.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Cue music, Places and everybody places. We're starting in three two.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Welcome to the Autoimmune Hour, where we look at the
rise of autoimmune disorders. I've brought together top experts that
range from doctors, specialist, nutritionist, researchers, and even those recovering
from autoimmune to bring you the latest, most up to
date information about autoimmunity and how to live your life uninterrupted.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Thank you for joining us here on the Autoimmune Hour
with Sharon Sailor. Always seek sound, legal, medical, and or
professional advice regarding any problems, conditions, and any of the
recommendations you see here or read here on the auto
Immune Hour, Understanding Autoimmune and Life Interrupted Radio. Join the
Autoimmune Hours Courage Club. Sign up now at Understanding autoimmune
dot com. Now back to your host Sharon Saylor.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
Welcome everyone to the Autoimmune Hour.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
I'm Sharon Sailor from Sharonsailor dot com and as always,
it's my honor and pleasure to be with you on
another brand new episode.

Speaker 4 (01:30):
And I'm so excited we have a repeat guest.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
And I'm also going to talk about serendipity because I've
been meeting a lot of people lately and it's fascinating
their views of healing and I'm.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
Totally on board with it. You know me, I'm like,
I don't really know.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
So that's what I love about the show. We have
such a huge community. We can reach out to lots
of people and say, what do you think about that?
Let's to say I'm expanding my viewpoint of what is healing.
I think that's the best way to say it. I
could tell from my ten years of recovery and healing
that I have grown exponentially.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
When I first.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Started the show, I thought about having medical professionals only
talk about only the physical. Fix my I've got a
splinter in my phone. We're going to fix that splinter,
I'll say very pointed and direct right. And I have
learned in these ten years that there are multiple ways
to define healing, and there's multiple ways to approach healing
and that I'm open to.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Exploring them all. And we've been.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Having a lot of guests talk about multiple ways of healing,
and so I decided to reach out to our perennial favorite,
doctor Jenny Tofankian ask her for her own thoughts, because
I know she's very versed in all sorts of these areas.
Plus she's also grounded in her medical profession. So let
me read a little bit about it. I know, I

(02:51):
apologize I'm going to have to get in close to
the screen to read her bio, but it's an awesome bio,
so I don't want to miss any of it. Her
name is doctor Jenny Tafankian, and she's a naturopathic physic
has treated chronic illness for over two decades, and having
complex chronic fatigue herself, she had no choice but to
dig deep into the literature and uncover the root causes

(03:11):
of chronic fatigue. Through her research and experience, she's developed
an effective system to unlock the five core root causes
so that people who are too exhausted to function can
start feeling like themselves again, or maybe even rediscover parts
of themselves that they didn't know about. And her secret
power is the ability to use her left brain and

(03:32):
all of her vast medical knowledge with what i'll call
this intuitive sense of what is healing and all the
other parts that play into healing. And that's what I
wanted to talk to her today is we're going to
talk about healing, and we're going to talk about what
is healing to each of us and how it can
be very different for everyone. And I could go on
and on. I just want to let you know if
she is a licensed natural pathic position primary doctor, and

(03:56):
she is really a sought after speaker all around the world.
So I'm thrilled that she it's taking the time to
be with us today. Thanks for being on the show,
doctor Jenny. I so appreciate you coming back to help
me unravel this question I now have.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
It's always a pleasure to talk with you, Sharon. I'm
excited to be here today and have this conversation. We'll
see where it leads us.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Absolutely, as my audience knows it, gods rabbit holes left
and right. Jenny's been a long time, decades long friend,
so she knows just to buckle up and hang on, Jenny.
The big question to me now, as my experience over
the past ten years, very much until my first journey
was like fixed the physical and I get that, and

(04:35):
that made sense from where I my background and everything.
But I have come to discover that healing is so
much more and it's very individualized. I know that is
a huge broad opening here. I just but I'm gonna
throw it open and let's just explore what is healing.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Oh, that's such a good question. What is healing?

Speaker 2 (04:58):
First?

Speaker 1 (04:58):
I just want to say that, yes, so much of
our culture focuses on this physical level, and it's just
the kind of the scientific philosophy that we're imbued in.
And really, when we look at what can we now
prove with science, we can prove that we have this
physical body, we have a mental emotional body, and we

(05:19):
also have an energetic body. And you can have disease
or disharmony in any one of those three levels and
it can impact the other ones. You and I know, Sharon,
just from our lives and our journeys with our health
and our emotional world, how much that chronic stress and
early childhood experiences and the interpretation of what happened to

(05:40):
us when we were little has impacted how easy it
was for us to get chronic disease at some point
in our life. And I know those of you listening
we're struggling with autoimmune conditions. There's so much more understanding
now of that emotional body and how that can impact
our physical health. I feel like there's this new or understanding.

(06:00):
We're coming more and more into understanding this energetic body.
And I personally am on my own trajectory of understanding
this energy body more of one. Am I out of balance? There?
One of my inbalance? What can I do to bring
that balance in? So to answer your question, what is healing?
Healing to me is really when all three of those
bodies are in alignment. And I'm going to use a

(06:22):
word that sounds not very scientific, but I'm going to
say it because it's how it feels to me when
I'm in it, and it's what I see in other people.
It's flow. It's really that there aren't any blocks to
the energy flowing. And if you want to bring science
in here, what the people that I think have studied
this particular thing the best is actually heart math. When

(06:45):
you look at their research that they're doing, and they're
studying the energy flow around us. They have really literally
studied that there is an energetic field that comes out
from our heart and that heart. When that heart energy system,
they can since what the pattern is and when it's
in alignment with the energy that's above your head, not
actually in your head, but above your head, when that's

(07:06):
in coherence, they can test it. I'm looking around to
reb because I have some monitors here that can begin
to assess how in or out of coherence I am,
and we can begin to actually study that. And what
we have seen is that when people are able to
get into this state of coherence, the autonomic nervous system
begins to reregulate back into what we would call normal.

(07:31):
You and I have talked about, and I've talked on
this show many times about how the body wants to
become back in balance, The body wants to be healthy.
Sometimes even our physical symptoms of illness are actually the
body trying to get back into a state of health.
There is this rhythm and wants to be normalized. And
these are some of the things that we're beginning to realize.

(07:52):
When we bring those in, we can experience health, but
real health. Health is one of those things that you
take for advantage until it goes away, that's right.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Unfortunately, Yeah, no, you think it's always going to be
there till it isn't. Yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, and then
in hindsight you wonder, yeah, I should have seen it
coming in hindsight, but I don't know.

Speaker 4 (08:16):
For me, I've always got an excuse.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Okay, I'll just cheat this one time, and then that
turns into multiple times.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
But I digress.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
What I can be honest about for myself and my experience,
because looking back, I think that I first got myle
chicken cephalitis chronic fatigue when I was probably a kid,
and I think I had a flare in high school
that was pooh pooed by the Kaiser physicians I went
to see. They said, you're you don't have strap, you
don't have mono, You're just trying to skip school, go
back to school. Kid was really exhausted, and I'm sure

(08:45):
my steinbar virus had been reactivated, and I was really
sick and really should have had different kind of care.
But the thing that I can say for myself when
I have gone into when I've had something reactivated is
in hindsight there's always a peer of denial that I
go into, and as much as I'm aware of this,
I find it hard as a human being who likes

(09:07):
to do a lot of things to be willing to
accept what's really happening in my body in a time
and to take the time out. Soon enough, I have
gotten better over the years. I catch things sooner, and
which is partly why I try to share time explaining
this to other people, because I think all of us
fall into that, all of us who are professionals and
parents and who just like doing stuff and also have

(09:31):
chronic stuff going on. There's this place where it's, Oh,
I just don't really want to deal with this part
of my being right now. I just want to keep going.
And if I just ignore it a little bit longer,
maybe it'll go.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Away exactly, or I can tough it out. I'm resilient.
You really want to go through this? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (09:48):
No?

Speaker 3 (09:49):
And that's what I love about you, because in so
many cases it reconfirms my sanity.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
I know that sounds strange, but.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
I do get to that point where I started feeling
really great and doing things, and then sometimes I overdo.
But I don't really know where that line is, and
I'm getting better and better at realizing. Okay, here's the
first inkling. Okay, time to readjust what are you doing?

Speaker 4 (10:15):
But I like hearing that.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
It's not unnormal to have it constantly being a balancing
act of doing something readjust doing something readjust because somehow
in my mind, which would be ideal, maybe it happens.

Speaker 4 (10:29):
I don't know. It was like you reach healing and
there you stay.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
It's like the Hollywood romance movie.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
It's like, to me the person and it's perfect for
the rest of your life exactly.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
And now you're telling me that maybe not. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
Let us just go back to this, you know when
you talk about this, Oh, I overdid it? What do
I need to do? And I think there's a couple
things I'd really like to dive in here around because
there's some very subtle, nuanced pieces that I would love
to talk with you about, because I think you're such
a great person to have this conversation with. When we

(11:08):
feel like we've overdone it. First of all, it's easy
to go into one of the places that's dangerous, which
is where we start to get self critical of ourselves.
Oh god, Jenny, you did it again.

Speaker 4 (11:19):
Oh there you go.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Why did you blah blah blah blah. So what's that?
That is a negative voice, that's a negative tape. What
is that doing. It's shutting down our system. That's a shutdown.
That's an emotional and energetic shutdown. You're basically telling yourself,
excuse a language, you're a piece of shit. And I'm
sorry to be so strong, but that's literally what is
happening there, and that's not helpful for us. And this

(11:43):
is some of the part when we start talking about
this mental, emotional, energetic, physical body. How when we start
to become aware of these unconscious patterns that we have
and start to shift them, we can actually begin to
re energize ourself in a new way. I'm just going
to go somewhere and you have to let me know
if this makes sense, Sharon, and interrupt me. Okay, So

(12:03):
when I was my sickest, when I was in my
second year of medical school and I had the seventeen
week miscarriage and hemorrhage and was in bed for months,
unable to eat or sleep and just so sick. That
was a time when I would say that all three
of my systems were down my physical body was down,
my emotional body was down, and my energetic body was down.

(12:26):
When we are really flat out, often all three of
those systems are down, and that's unusual to have all
of them down at once. Usually it's one or the other.
Usually we can be really physically down, but emotionally we're
doing okay, or energetically we're doing okay, and we can
pull on the other systems. Real health is when all

(12:48):
of those systems work well. When we talk about overdoing
and beginning to feel like we're going down a slide
where we may be at risk for a relapse, so
we just don't feel good, it can be really insightful
and helpful if we can figure out which system, which
level needs the support, and which one is strong to

(13:10):
give that one the support it needs. Does that make
sense at all? I'm happy to explain more.

Speaker 4 (13:15):
No, it absolutely makes sense.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
My question was, though, I'm understanding that the idea of okay,
which one is strong now, and they all might be
a varying percentages, shall we say?

Speaker 4 (13:25):
I gotta see it.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
There's a zero to one hundred kind of scale here,
and I love the idea of being able to what
part of me has the capacity right now to nourish
the other parts.

Speaker 4 (13:35):
Okay, so that's what we're talking about, yeah, okay, Or.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Which level is really throwing up the alert signals? So
anytime we don't feel well, there's some kind of signal
in the body that has created some kind of a
some kind of a something. So let me explain. You
could be feeling down because you, like me, were around
a bunch of people with COVID and maybe you caught

(13:59):
a little bit of something or and your body is
fighting off having a straight immune reaction to something, and
that's part of you feeling crummy, And that's a very
physical thing, and you need to bring in with some
physical tools to support your immune system so that you
don't go down a whole slide of illness. Sometimes we
just feel crap and we don't know why. It's like

(14:22):
we just feel like we're beginning to crash, and there
may be physical things like a headache or fatigue or
body aches that are coming on. We don't know why
yet when we check in, we can realize that we're
feeling that it's on the emotional level that we've been
feeling really stressed out, that we're not feeling happy, that
we are struggling with a lot of stress in relationships

(14:43):
or with work, and we start tuning into the feeling
tone of what has been going on in us, may
realize that that it's really an emotional level type of
thing that's impacting us. And then for me personally, if
it's more energetic, it often has a very heavy feeling.
And often because I'm so sensitive, it may not even

(15:03):
be my energy. It may be that I picked up
stuff from somewhere else and I just need to do
some kind of an energy clearing piece there. So beginning
to get more sophisticatedly attuned to which levels are actually
causing you to experience this feeling of disease so that
you can choose the appropriate tool. I always talk about

(15:24):
it's great to have more tools in your toolkit that
you can pull out, and the more years you live,
the more time you invest in your health, the bigger
that toolkit is. I know, Sharon, you have a huge
toolkit now of things that you can pull out.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Oh, absolutely, ones that I never thought about ten years ago.
What I'm loving about this is I think for people
maybe I'm going to put in air quotes or who
are just now learning this or beginners. Maybe for me,
the first place I always looked was the physical. That
was the most obvious, that was the loudest. Shall I say, oh,

(15:58):
you wake up in the morning.

Speaker 4 (16:00):
That's loud.

Speaker 3 (16:02):
And then I learned to stop and go, Okay, what
else is there? Checking in with the other systems? And
so it's okay to start at one level, and it
can sound up overwhelming if you don't really break it
down step by step like your program does, it can
sound really overwhelming, especially if you say, no, what the

(16:23):
idea of checking in with my spiritual system is? But
I've never really been there, so I don't know what
it is.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
And so it can be as easy as what makes
you feel better. So if you feel better when you're
out in nature, or if you feel better when you're
near water, or if you feel better after you meditate
or pray or whatever it is that helps you ground
into that piece of you that's bigger or more than yourself,

(16:51):
or you just feel more clear. That's your energy body,
that's your energetic self. That's really what we're working on
when we're working on some types of meditation and breath
work and focus. That's it. That's why people talk about it.
That's one of the reasons why people talk about it's
so good to be in nature and it can be
so healing, is that we are shifting and the lining

(17:15):
more into our energetic body just because of the environment
that we're in, and that's where it leads us to.
So it doesn't have to be more than that.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
That's nice to know, because you know, if you're not
familiar with it, and maybe you just have an inkling
about it, it can sound like really big and scary.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
It can. And part of why I bring it up here,
and I know a lot of people don't talk about
this because the people that I see tend to have
been sick for a really long time, and a lot
of them are really energetically sensitive, and often a lot
of us grew up in a way where being aware
of what other people were going through in the room
was a safety position for us. My dad was amazing,

(17:56):
lovely human being, and he suffered depression, was a rage aholic,
So as a small child, I needed to learn how
to read the room before I even got out of
bed in the morning to figure out what kind of
day it was in the house and how safe or
dangerous it was. This connects back with that limbic brain
that's always surveying for safety and danger. And we know

(18:17):
that limbic brain can go into a dysfunctional state when
people are chronically ill, and it can become a vicious
cycle of how we stay physically sick because this limbic
brain is out of whack from all the stress it
is perceiving from the outside and the inside of the body.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
I'm totally fascinated by the olympic brain. Tell us a
little bit more about how we recognize that we're needing
to pay more attention to that state of being and
talk more about the olympic brain, because I don't think
people bring that up enough.

Speaker 1 (18:49):
Yeah, the limbic brain is amazing. What was fascinating for
me was one of the key things, and this is
going to be shocking, and some of you may reject
this outright, is that multiple chemical sensitivity is a sign
that your limbic brain is in dysfunction. And I did
not know that, Yes it is, and I in the nineties,
I was very chemically sensitive. And I'm just like I'm

(19:11):
a canary in the coal mine. This is crazy. All
this stuff that we're putting in our soaps and in
our laundry detergent, and it's so toxic and it is crazy,
and it is toxic. It is not good for you.
That said, what was fascinating to me is when I
went through limbic retraining and I got my limbic brain balanced,
what I found shocking is I walked into the bathroom

(19:33):
in the airport and put the soap in my hand,
and I'm like, huh, that kind of smells good and sweet,
like the perfume that Grandma gave me when I was
a little girl. And I was like, Oh, my gosh,
what's happened to me? I actually am experiencing pleasure the
smell of this thing that used to be like, Oh,

(19:54):
oh god, I can't believe how toxic this is. It's
gonna poison me and it's poisoning you. Yus. Literally, my
olfactory sensors altered once my limbic brain was not so
focused on danger. And I've seen this happen over and
over again to people. So this is one of the
clinical signs that I'm listening for in terms of if

(20:16):
I'm thinking of somebody's limbic brain might be out of whack.
So that's one key one. I'd say some of the
more subtle ones are interesting because they are subtle shifts
in outlook and mindset. If your mindset is always looking
for is somewhat fear based, and often many of us

(20:37):
naturally fall into this if you're dealing with chronic illness,
because there's so many things that can be potential triggers
for you, and so it's really easy to begin to
see the world you're trying to create safety for yourself,
and you start looking for danger as a way to
protect yourself. But then that kind of that job of
looking for danger, they start taking on more than they
need to, and they start recruiting other parts of your brains. So,

(21:00):
for instance, if you go to a restaurant, then you're
looking at the menu and you're worried about all the
things in there that could potentially trigger reaction in your gut.
That's you looking for danger. If you go into that
with an attitude of there's never anything for me to eat.
All these other people get to do stuff I don't
get to do. Oh my god, I can't. I don't
even know why I'm here. There's this really negative frame

(21:23):
of mind around it. Again that maybe from self preservation.
But if you start noticing that there's that negative mindset
around trying to protect yourself, that's a sign of being
an in limbic imbalance.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
I call it the yeah but yeah yeah, And so.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
When that's there, that's a very good sign. An overarching,
overarching sadness can also be a sign of limbic dysfunction.
And a lot of people who struggle with chronic illness
also struggle with depression or anxiety, and that sadness can
be part of it, but it's more of an over
identifying with that experience of sadness instead of just oh,
I'm sad because I found out that somebody I know

(22:01):
is not doing well and I'm feeling sad about them.
It's like this overarching kind of sadness, kind of feeling
is just there all the time. It's those heavier feelings
are a good sign that your limbic brain may be dysfunctional.
And the great news is that there are things that
you can do. And even in that instance of again
we talk about the toolkit. So you find yourself in

(22:22):
the restaurant, you're a little bit tired, you're trying to
orb some food, you're with a bunch of people, it's loud,
it's feeling more of an insult to your system than
something that's supposed to be happy and fun where you
get to connect with other people. As soon as you
catch yourself in that situation, you can choose to take
action and do something different. And your choice is at

(22:43):
that time a you can just leave if you don't
feel like it is a good place for you to be.
But more to the nuanced part that I'm talking about,
once you identify it, you can make a consciousness shift
like that and choose to be in that space in
a different way. Sometimes I've had to remove myself for
a minute to get reoriented to how I really want

(23:04):
to show up in this situation for myself.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
So I have found that easier to do to step outside,
get some fresh air, or go to the rest of
splash and black water on my hands.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Or face exactly that amazing bathroom stall to have a
moment or the bathroom, or to step outside and to
reorient and then to be like, Okay, I'm choosing to
be here. Here are all the great things I can
get out of being in this situation, Like I love
talking with people. I get to know these folks and
it's a regrouping that can happen. And as soon as
you can find your joy and chr gratitude, you've literally

(23:39):
shifted your physiology into this place of more healing, and
that becomes a really good message for that limbic brain
that you're safe and it can chill out a little bit.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
As my friend Michael says, go outside and pop up
as a whole new person.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
I love that. That's really it is. It's great, It's
really good. Yep.

Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, So I have a tangental question. I'm a little
confused on terms. And we've talked on the show. No
we have here, but I've had the guest talk about
the autonomic nervous system and disautonomia, and now we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (24:12):
The olympic system.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
How are they related or are they the same thing.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
I'm confused.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
They're all connected. So the autonomic nervous system is your
nervous system that's automatically running all the time. It's running
our heart rate, our breathing rate, it is doing it's
picking up information and running information through your body all
the time. Disautonomia is that system broken, not functioning normally,

(24:42):
and the limbic brain is key to all of this
because the autonomic nervous system runs through the body. The
vagus nerve is the largest nerve in the body. It
senses all the different organs, the spleen, the liver, the stomach.
There are little I do this down here, like you
can't see it, but I'm doing fingers. Look got in
my head is that picture of that vegus nerve going

(25:03):
down and it goes has a little thing for the
spleen and the liver, and it sends information up to
the limbic brain. The limbic brain is a series of
different parts of your brain. It's the amygnala, it's the hippocampus,
it's a couple different pieces that work together in your
subconscious mind, and it's literally connected through a huge nerve

(25:25):
network to that vegus nerve. So what you have is
you have the vegus nerve is like a communication highway
that sends information from the brain down to the body
and from the body up to the brain, and they're
always cross checking each other. There's a lot of information
that goes up. If you have dysbiosis, if you've got

(25:48):
irrital bal you're eating foods, you're not shouldn't be eating
if your liver is congested with toxins or parasites or
something's going on. It's sending messages up to the limbic
brain saying things aren't so great down here. Things aren't
so great down here. Then you have your limbic brain
that as part of your subconscious mind, is sending messages

(26:08):
from everything you've ever experienced in utero to present day.
That is in your unconscious mind, any generational memory in there.
And if you believe that you have a soul and
that has a journey, anything from your soul journey as well,
is in that subconscious mind. And if that has been
unexamined and it's still sending off the same negative signals

(26:28):
that's been sending to your whole life because you haven't
done any work in that area, it's sending down its
negative message down to the body saying I'm not safe.
I'm not safe, I'm not safe. When you start piling
all of these i'm not safe up of physical stuff
that's literally is happening to you, and then the stuff
coming from the top down, it can throw a body

(26:49):
into dysfunction. And what we find is one of the
things that goes into dysfunction is the autonomic nervous system itself.
And one of the ways that an autuni nervous system
out of function can show up is in this thing
called disautonomia. And then disautonomia you get all these weird
things where it's very hard for your body to adjust

(27:11):
to where you are, Are you up, are you down?
And you can feel lightheaded and extremely exhausted all of
a sudden and feel like you're dying, and all kinds
of stuff instantly because it was too hot in the
room or you didn't drink of water that day or
little things like that. And yeah, so does that answer
that question.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
Yeah, it does.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
So they're related and they work in tandem with each other.
And that's where I was confused, Like a lot of
what I was hearing sounded like that also sounds like
the autonomic nervous system. So I was thank you for
defining how they play well together or maybe not play
well to get there based on what we're doing exactly.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
And they really are very much integral to each other.
And the things that I'll just have to say about
long COVID because it's something that I work with a
lot of people with that, and I person have personal
experience with it when I got COVID it's almost been
two years ago now. It was so interesting to me
because it really felt like two things to me in

(28:08):
my body, and is that the on day nine, it
felt like all of that, all of those little virons
just went in and attacked my mindochondria, and just all
of a sudden, overnight had a relapse of my chronic
fatigue logic encephalitis. And the other thing that was so
fascinating to me, having studied the limbic brain, taught about

(28:30):
it and worked a lot on heal in my own
is that, literally it felt like the COVID virus went
in on this whole central nervous system, this whole vegas nerve,
and was just like sh like this like literally felt
like a vibration of like jud of irritation on my
vegas nerve, which was incredibly triggering for my limbic brain.

(28:51):
So again you talk about that physical, mental, locial, and
energetic level, this was not This was limbic brain disturbance
from a physical thing. It was from a virus that
had invaded my nerves and was causing mayhem in my
nervous system, and I experienced it as a physical sensation
of a vibration, and it triggered a lot of uncomfortable

(29:14):
feelings in my body that my brain, my limbic brain,
then interpreted as being extremely unsafe. And I had to constantly,
day in and day out, do things to keep reminding
my limbic brain to not take that message also seriously.

(29:35):
And it's hard and some days more successful than other days.
But I really want to mention that because I think
that even in the I'm so excited that we are
understanding more about the limbic brain and about energy work
and how you can have somebody on that say they
meditated their way out of a chronic disease. I fully
believe that. I think we have incredible power in us

(29:56):
to heal our own bodies. And there are physical, actual
physical things that impact that emotional, energetic body. It's not
like it's all your fault. But it's not like this,
oh you created this, Like you made yourself sick. To
a certain level, I can say, yes, that's true, and
there are also these things that come into your body,

(30:17):
and I'd say, rather than you made yourself sick, I
would say you have the ability to heal. You're just
going to need to approach it from this multi leveled
way if you really want to experience the true transformation
that is possible when you address all of your root
causes and you address all three of these different layers.

Speaker 4 (30:38):
Oh I love that.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
I love that. It's so easy to blame ourselves and
take us down, and it sounds like it almost exacerbates
the problem when we start doing that. So I like
the reframe of yes and there might have been a
part I played by poor die Lac of sleep, whatever,
it might been, stress, whatever, but.

Speaker 4 (30:56):
It's not shame on you. It's a yes and yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
And I think it's incredibly courageous. And we have to
be really courageous in terms of honoring ourselves and who
we are and what we need to do, because there
are times when those people around us don't understand what's
happening to us and why we need to do the
things we do, and easy to anticipate their confusion or
their frustration and take that on as well as another burden. Right,

(31:25):
those patterns of guilt the lot of us carry around
needing to try to be better or take care of
everybody else. And it's so important to be courageous and
to just honor what is going on with you? What
do you need? How can I love myself even more?
Right now? That's the secret sauce right there. It's really
all ultimately about love, which sounds so unscientific. How can

(31:48):
I be a doctor coming on here and just saying
it's really about love? But yet each one of our
different emotions has a vibration, and the vibration of gratitude,
the vibration of love, the vibration of appreciation literally can
be measured. They are higher level vibrations. And when we
literally can feel that, it does help the body heal

(32:09):
and we can go into and those vibrations literally impact
the outside of ourselves where we have sensors, and they
can impact the DNA in terms of what is genes
are turned on and turned off, what proteins are expressed,
and how whether we're expressing a pattern of health or disease.

Speaker 4 (32:27):
Wow, I love that it all comes from love.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
I've known that and to experience it is awesome. And
I think the hard part though, when I was going
through the transition and learning a lot of this and
a lot from you, was giving myself permission. I know
that sounds weird, but it's like you can get it
on an intellectual level, but then part of you there's

(32:49):
a real For me at least, there was an argument
about I've got more important things to do family, job,
blah blah blah or who am I It was a
real interesting trends position period for me to give myself
permission to even go to those places.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Right. I totally agree, And I've also struggled that with
myself and when I work with people, I see that's
something that we all struggle with at one time or another,
which is why I bring it up. And I think
it's just so true for all of us to know
that it's the highest level of healing that we can
have is to take care of ourselves and that we
do have the right and there is a need for

(33:26):
us to learn how to do that, as hard as
it is at times.

Speaker 4 (33:31):
Yeah wow, so this is great.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
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Speaker 5 (33:47):
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Speaker 4 (34:51):
If that could be you could be me, just one a.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
If we get find a way to get inside each
other is mine? Welcome all in my shoes, walcome all
in my shoes. Well before you abused, quit aside and accused,
welcome all in my shoes.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
That's why I say brave, courageous. That's what's the most
courageous thing I can do right now? I can love myself,
even though even though I'm not able to do the
work today that I had intended to do, even though
I wasn't able to show up from my kid the
way I wanted to because I wasn't feeling well. Right,
I'm still love myself.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Right absolutely, and what a service that does for your
family and friends in the outer world. When we love
ourselves first, it's not selfish. I hear people say I
don't have time. That's so selfish. I'm like, look, maybe
we can get very pragmatic and go if you get sick,
you really won't have time. I get very pragmatic about

(36:02):
it at that level.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
And the other thing again to share with you here
just being super true about my journey, is that I
can honestly tell what state I'm in just walking outside.
If I'm in a state where I am really loving
towards myself and I'm in my flow, my smile is
easy to everybody outside, and I am super generous in

(36:23):
my thinking about others, in my acts towards others, and
everything that I do. It's easy because I am already
in a state of love and joy and flow, and
of course I only want to help out others if
I'm in that state compared to if I'm in a
very self critical state, if I'm clamped down, if my
olympic brain is jacked up. Not only do those chemical

(36:47):
smell toxic to me as a sign that my limbic
brain is jacked up and I need to do some
work on it, but my negative glasses are on as well,
where I'm judging other people, or I'm feeling critical, or
I don't have the time the energy to help out
that person right now or something like that. Does that
make sense? Like it's for me? It's I can go
through my day on my meet or and go how

(37:08):
was I to like? Where was I? And so much
of it's how I interact. So you talk about not
wanting to ultimately be of service or help others, it's
really about starting here inside yourself. And if you want
to talk about being most effective as a parent or working,
it's really starting right here. And if you want to
be how am I showing up for me?

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Is the critical question there that we like to ask,
And for me it's interesting too when we say how
are you showing up for me? Maybe it's a skill
I could be that it was doing that assessment and
then it becomes fairly easy to like, Okay.

Speaker 4 (37:46):
Then what do I want to do instead? It's not oh,
I'm stuck here.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
Once I make that conscious awareness, oh, I'm showing up
in a way I don't want to be showing up
for myself, which then reflects out on everything else. To
make the conscious choice of Okay, I'm not showing up
the way I want to show up. How do I
want to show up, and then making that conscious choice.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
To do it, to act on it exactly. Yeah. In
the past, I've taught this the three step thing to
shift your emotional state. And the first one is just awareness.
It's just getting conscious of what am I feeling, what
this inside outside thing? What am I feeling, what's going on?
The second one is choose do I want to stay
in my grumpy little oscar the grouge mode, or do

(38:27):
I want to change? Sometimes you just want to have
a cranky day. That's cool, have a cranky day whatever,
It's up to you if that gives you pleasure, but
you can choose. You literally have the choice of choosing.
And then the third is to pick your tool, like
which tool do you need out of your toolkit? To
make that shift? Just sometimes just smelling an essential oil
can shift my energy field. Or like we talked about
going outside or practicing a second of appreciation of looking

(38:50):
around the room, what do I see that brings joy
and beauty to me? I like, have this beautiful flower
in front of me and some behind me, so I'm
like something to look at. And those things can be
really helpful in the moments.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
Oh absolutely, I love that.

Speaker 3 (39:05):
And also I'm a big fan, and I know you
are too about journaling, so I can keep track.

Speaker 4 (39:12):
Oh, that used to work for me. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Sometimes I forget about those my essential oils, or sometimes
I forget about something that can quickly and easily shift
my mood, or.

Speaker 4 (39:24):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
I find that keeping track of some of those things
that work for me work really well.

Speaker 4 (39:30):
And I also say it may have used to work
for me, but it doesn't work for me now.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
And that was a fascinating point for me when I'm like, oh,
but always when I used to do that, it used
to work to me. I take that as a sign
of growth, that something is obviously changed, and that there's
a sign of growth that I no longer need whatever
that was serving me at that time.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
Yeah, when we talk about change and we talk about healing,
one of the things about the Olympic brain is when
we're talking about what helps heal the Olympic brain, it's
practicing thing over and over again, so that you literally
create new neural networks and so some things that didn't
work before will now work differently for in a new way.

(40:10):
But what I really want to say about that is
if you're new to this, if what we're talking about
is new, or even if you've been doing this for
a long time, whenever you're practicing something for the first time,
you have to do it a lot and be really
conscious about it. And if you're trying to get yourself
to become more conscious of where you are emotionally and
shift to a more positive state, it can be really helpful.

(40:33):
I think even to have a list upfront in terms
of what those tools are like, you're saying to journal
them as a great idea, But I know for some
of my patients, they're those big hues wall sized stickies.
Like we've just written down the list of things that
they can for their toolkit that they can go to,
and it's on their kitchen wall. So if they're walking

(40:54):
through their house and they catch themselves. They're like, oh
I can, that's right, I can do my deep breathing exercises,
or I can the gold stars?

Speaker 4 (41:02):
Are you talking about a gold star list? Okay, I'm
a gold Star girl. I'm on board. And the more
I just want to throw in.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Think about how great to model for your kids if
you have this gold star like grumpy mood whatever, grumpy
mood changers and all of this sort of thing. What
an interesting thing to model for your family.

Speaker 1 (41:23):
Wouldn't it be amazing?

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
I know, right, the things that we know now that
I wish I.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
Knew then, Yeah, obviously, But I'm lucky enough. I've got grandkids,
so we could still practice those things with ourselves and
enter them into the world.

Speaker 4 (41:39):
Oh my goodness, this is fascinating.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
As we grow and strengthen our Olympics Olympic system, how
come I.

Speaker 4 (41:47):
Can't say that Olympic system. The mouth isn't working here.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
As we strengthen and grow our Olympic system and we
begin to model those on the outside physically or in
our space, does.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
The body shift just naturally or I guess I'm a
little confused.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Does the ship on your own or what kind of
actions do we have to take to help support it.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
Yes, and yes, So let me just back up and say,
just to when the limbic brain goes into a state
of dysfunction. So it's not dysfunctional for everybody, but for
those of us who have limbic brain dysfunction. One of
the things that can happen when people are severely sick
with fatigue, with pain is that literally what has happened
is that the limbic system has compiled all this data

(42:33):
from the organs and from the brain and everything and said,
we're not safe, and so it starts sending out signals
to the body to stay safe. You remember how I
first started in the beginning, said in the beginning, the
body's always trying to protect you. This is the limbic
brain trying to protect us, literally making hyper increasing not
just your sense of smell so that you spell toxic
things that other people don't, but also so that you

(42:56):
may have a lower threshold of pain. You may experience
more pain, or you may experience more fatigue. And literally
it is trying to tell you, and it's a very
unsophisticated way to stay safe, sending out so many signals.
So that you stop being social, you stop hanging out,
and you go hide behind your rock in your cave,
go somewhere where it's safe. And that's pretty much all

(43:18):
the limbic brain can say is I don't know what's
going on. I just know it's really dangerous. I need
you to go hide. I need you to go away
and be safe. I'm going to throw out all this stuff.
In medical terms, this is called sleepiness behavior or torp war.
And they see how that limbic brain impacts the mitochondria,
and it actually slows down energy production in the mitochondria
and slows down the processes in our body. So you

(43:39):
really are more tired, you really are experiencing more pain.
As you become aware that this is a limbic brain issue,
and you start reframing things, you start reprogrammed, literally reprogramming
your brain. First, I'll have to say that your limbic
brain will not want to do this. It thinks it's right,
it knows it's right. You're going to be incredibly resistant
to doing any kind of change. It took me a

(44:00):
year of resistance before I finally approached mine, and then
I felt amazing when I did it. And you're going
to resist the You're going to keep questioning is this
really my limbic brain or is this something I really
need to pay attention to. So I just have to
say that as a side. Now, once you start working
on your limbic brain and it starts to heal and
gets into balanced out, so it's still working as Olympic

(44:24):
brain surveying for safety and danger, but it's not so
strongly biased on the danger side. It can be more
balanced and maybe even more optimistic than you ever thought
you possibly could be. What starts to happen is that
the body goes into normal regulation. Now, for some people
that's all they need to get their body into health.
There was a person who came to see me who

(44:45):
had fibro mialgia chronic critique syndrome, had just been in
a motor vehicle accident. High level professional woman, and she
came in to see me and we did food sensitivity testing.
She had CIBOW, she had all kinds of stuff going on,
and I knew that we could have spent months and
months working on all those things, but it was so
clear to me that her Olympic brain was hijacked that

(45:07):
I said, just let's do this first. Let's work on
the limbic brain first and then we'll see what's left.
And that's what she did. She was really disciplined. She
did the limbic brain work. She did that first, and
then we still needed to work some on her diet.
But she was like she had dizziness that she thought
she was going to have for the rest of her
life from her MVA that was just gone. She never
thought that would even leave. She didn't even tell me

(45:29):
about it until it was left. So her body started
to go into a lot of normalization just naturally. I've
heard there are ways that your liver can detoxify more
effectively when your limbic brain is functioning normally. So some
people have high bounced toxins and they need to do
some kind of detoxification so that they can have the

(45:49):
energy they need to have. Other people, all they need
to do is to work on that limbic brain so
then their liver can start working normally and clear the
garbage out. It's very hard to predict upfront as to
which it's going to be, but it can really shift
the body so the body can just heal naturally without it,
and then other people need to continually do other things.

Speaker 4 (46:12):
Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
We're just down to the last five minutes. Jenny, I
want you to talk about any final thoughts, and I
know you have group and individual opportunities for people who
are saying hand up. That just sounds like meday final thoughts,
and then share a little bit about your programs.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
I think final thought is just never underestimate the power
of your own body to heal. And I'd say, just
like Sharon and so many of us, we really find
value in honoring the journey that we're in because there's
so many things that you're going to discover that you
didn't even know we're ours that are so pleasurable and
so great.

Speaker 5 (46:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
It's like when you really own this journey, it can
become it can be so eliminating. And to really never
give up is what I would say, because I really
think that we all have the incredible ability to get
to the next level of health.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
Absolutely, and I'm always what I enjoy now it's just
a state of amazement and awe and oftentimes I'm like
being in that state of where I'm willing to be like, Wow,
I didn't even think that was possible.

Speaker 4 (47:16):
This is so cool.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yeah, I'm so great.

Speaker 4 (47:19):
I didn't even know this was possible. That's so cool.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
That's so great.

Speaker 3 (47:26):
I think that opens up that I don't know, maybe
it relaxes the autonomic nervous is in the Olympic brain
and says, Okay, if we made it here, where else
can we go?

Speaker 1 (47:34):
There's definitely some truth to that for sure.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:37):
So tell us a little bit about your programs, though,
I would love to have everybody know, because you've got
these great individual as well as group opportunities.

Speaker 1 (47:45):
Absolutely. Yeah. I've really shifted how I've been working with
folks and finding bringing people in for a concentrated period
of time. I bring people into work with me for
six to twelve months at a time and do intensives
with them. And I also have this group program which
has been so fun. It's filled with people who are
on this journey, and every day that we meet, they
always say the same thing, which is, it's so great

(48:07):
to be with people who understand what is going on
without needing to explain it, and they're able to just
learn what it is their next step is, and it's
incredibly powerful. If you're at all curious about anything that
I have to offer, check out my website Dr Jenny
Tofinkian dot com. If you're interested to seeing if we're
a good match to work together, you can fill it
in a form to apply to working with me. I

(48:30):
look through every one of those forms. If it feels
like I only take on people who I feel like
I can help, and I also take on people who
I feel are ready to do the work. And I
love meeting you and having a chat. And if we
feel like we're a good fit, we can talk about.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
That fantastic and we'll have her website up on Understanding
Autoimmune dot com for you as well. But Jenny, I
want you to please spell your URL so if people
grab your pencils, community to grab your pencils. So can
you spell your u arel because a lot of people.

Speaker 4 (49:01):
Won't know how it's spelled.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Yeah, d R Jenny j E N N y T,
thank T you, Ephison, frank E n as A Nancy
k I A N.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
And when you see it spelled out there, are you
going to go just like it's just like just like
it said. Oh Jenny, we love you here, I love
you deeply. Thank you so much for all you do
and sharing and your insights, and I just love that
you are one of those people who explored realms of possibility,
and I think that's the part that so much about healing,

(49:38):
wellness whatever you want to call it. Mission. I told
my dmatologist one time when we were talking. They said, oh,
you're a remission, but I'm telling you you're not healed,
and thank you. So I love working in the realm
of possibilities instead of that. But aria, yes, exactly, so yes,
and that we mentioned earlier is where I love to

(50:00):
play yes and yes, And on occasion I play with
not yet. And I don't mean that in a negative way,
but like someone else say are you there, you know,
like not yet instead of no, I like to leave
that up or not I'm not there yet instead of
saying no. And so that that's another one I love

(50:21):
to play with.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
So it's coming into form.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
Yes, absolutely, And what I love about your work is
it really reinforces that change is possible and it doesn't
have to be hard. It just you have to understand
the mechanics a change that's pretty methodical.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
After that, and the mechanics have changed for you because
it's individualized. We all have different places where we need
to do our work and places where we need to
get that support. So understanding what are your needs, what
are your next best steps is really where the key is.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
Yeah, Oh fantastic everyone, that's doctor Jenny to Fankan. Thank
you so much for being on the show. Community, thank
you so much for being here. And if you're watching
this on YouTube, please subscribe and also hit that little
like button if you would. Helps us grow the show
with the algorithms. I know for years I focused on
the audio part of the show, but now with the

(51:08):
ease of video editing, I just feel those shows equally
powerful when we see us in video as well. So
choose your modality for listening to us, and I appreciate
you all for being here through our ten year plus journey,
and thank you for supporting us, and please subscribe to
YouTube or whatever audio format you're listening to. Love you all,

(51:30):
have a great week, whatever your adventures. Join me next
week for another brand new episode.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Enjoy the information provided on the autoi Immune Hour, Understanding
Autoimmune and Life Interrupted Radio, including the websites Understanding Autoimmune
dot com and Life Interrupted Radio dot Com. Plus social
media is for educational purposes only. What you read here
and see on The auto Immune Hour, Understanding Autoimmune and
Life Interrupted Radio and its websites and other media outlets
is based on experience only. The information should never be

(51:56):
used for any legal, diagnostic or treatment purposes.

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