The Body-Mind Connection with Guest Expert Dr. Mel Krug

Ep: 227

Do you frequently wake up with a kink in your neck? Do you suffer from persistent headaches or bothersome back pain that you just can’t seem to shake? 

Health issues can be debilitating, but ultimately, these aches and pains are your body’s way of sending you a message. And if you take the hint and answer the call, then not only will you eventually find relief, but the root cause might surprise you.

Today on The Bridge to Fulfillment®, Blake welcomes Dr. Mel Krug to the show. In 2014, Dr. Mel’s life was radically transformed when she discovered the powerful healing benefits of Network Spinal Chiropractic Care. Today, she is the founder of Inspire Life Chiropractic Center where she helps clients overcome chronic health challenges around anxiety, sleep, mental health, trauma, digestive issues, and so much more. As a holistic guide, coach, and mentor, she helps clients successfully grow their entrepreneurial skills and elevate their consciousness.

In this episode, you’ll learn why tapping into your nervous system is the most effective path to healing. You’ll hear examples of how addressing the root cause of physical trauma can ultimately free you from pain, even after decades of suffering. You’ll learn how to change the frequency of your nervous system to start telling a different story about your life and your physical well-being.

It is possible to unburden yourself from the physical and emotional trauma that you’ve been harboring and live a fuller, more joyful, and pain-free life. 

What You’ll Learn:

  • Blake’s journey toward a more holistic approach to health (6:06)
  • The life experiences that led Dr. Mel to find her calling (14:59)
  • Why compartmentalizing our health issues doesn’t address the root problem (24:56)
  • How to know if you’re holding on to trauma (31:16)
  • Re-tuning the frequency of your nervous system (40:00)

Favorite Quotes:

  1. “The power of chiropractic is helping people return back home to what’s always been there – it’s the body’s ability to heal.” – Dr. Mel Krug
  2. “Unless we get to the underlying wound and the trauma that we’ve experienced what There, it’s mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Unless we address that in your neurology, we’re only going to be scratching the surface of health.” – Dr. Mel Krug
  3. “When you have a mind problem, you go to a psychiatrist, if you have a foot problem, you go to a podiatrist, if you have a heart problem, you go to a cardiologist, right? When in reality, what’s the common denominator? It’s your body and your central nervous system. And that’s why I like to say body, mind or mind-body, because it’s not separate. It’s one unit.” – Dr. Mel Krug
  4. “If you’re unaware of how you feel, and you don’t know how you feel in your body, that means that you’ve had trauma, and you’ve literally disassociated.” – Blake

Additional Resources:

Connect with Dr. Mel Krug:

IG and FB:

  • @dr.melkrug, @inspirelifechirocenter, @projectlioness

Websites:

  • Drmelkrug.com
  • Inspirelifechirocenter.com
  • academy.inspirecomn.com

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For other programs and opportunities to work with Blake, go to www.BlakeSchofield.com

Transcript

Dr. Mel Krug 0:04
So when you have a mind problem, you go to a psychiatrist. If you have a foot problem, you go to a podiatrist. If you have a heart problem, go to a cardiologist, right? When in reality, what’s the common denominator? It’s your body and your central nervous system. And that’s why I like to say body mind, or mind body, because it’s not separate. It’s one unit.

Blake Schofield 0:30
Hi, I’m Blake Schofield, founder and CEO of The Bridge to Fulfillment®, mom to three, USA Today top 10 professional coach, and former corporate executive who got tired of sacrificing my life for a comfortable paycheck. My mission is to expand women’s perspectives and empower them to achieve greater impact at home and work without sacrifice. This is The Bridge to Fulfillment®.

Blake Schofield 1:05
After spending years in and out of doctors offices, Dr. Mel Krug finally discovered the powerful healing benefits of network spinal chiropractic care in which her life radically transformed in 2014. Upon graduation from chiropractic school, she then founded Inspired Life Chiropractic Center in the spring of 2017, in which she serves hundreds of people every month in overcoming chronic health care challenges including anxiety, sleep, mental health, trauma, digestive issues, and so much more. Beyond being dedicated to serving health to her community, over the years, Dr. Mel has also mentored many students with her self-guided business prep school program, as well as personal mentorship, and one on one coaching. From helping her clients to launch their businesses powerfully and successfully to growing their entrepreneurial skills and mindset, Dr. Mel is your go to holistic guide and learn how to elevate your own consciousness, energy, body mind, emotions, and vibration, in any area of your life.

Blake Schofield 2:06
I’m so excited to introduce you to my guest, Dr. Mel Krug. We had the pleasure of spending a couple of days together in LA earlier in this year. And she is just a force to be reckoned with a woman who shows up with vulnerability, honesty, and courage in a way that you can’t miss, when you meet her and experience her in real life. We really connected around many shared learnings and experiences around the mind body connection and what that really has to do with your health and how in many ways traditional medicine really was not the key to opening up the door of greater health, happiness, fulfillment, and ease in our lives. And so today’s episode may challenge your perspective in a number of ways. And I hope that it does, I hope it opens up a doorway for you that perhaps you might live a life more pain free, more aligned, more happy, and healthy in every way. Welcome to The Bridge to Fulfillment® podcast, Mel, I’m so happy to have you.

Dr. Mel Krug 3:17
I’m honored to be here, Blake.

Blake Schofield 3:19
So it’s wild to think that, yeah, it was less than three months ago, at two and a half months ago, we met in person in California at Dr. Jeff event. And I just think there was an immediate connection between the two of us. And I think a lot of shared experiences about what we’ve come to understand about the places that people are really suffering in their lives that were places that we were suffering that we overcame. And so talking to my team about who should we bring on next for the podcast, I really thought that your perspective would be super valuable because I think there’s so much misperception about the pain and suffering, specifically from our health that we go through. Because well, I mean, I think a lot of reasons. There’s a lot of old information that we’re coming from, often I think, there’s a dichotomy between traditional medicine and more holistic. I think people don’t really understand the lines between them, and I think it’s something that because we’re so used to seeing so much of it happen in the world. And we just assume that’s the way that it needs to be. That that’s all there kind of is a and you and I both know differently. And so I’ve had some other health professionals come on, but I think your perspective and your approach are different and so I’m excited to see what you can share today about your experience and what you know to be true to help other people and light the path for them.

Dr. Mel Krug 4:42
Thank you. I’m having flashbacks to our conversation at Dr. Jeff’s event just at dinner. You know, when we were really connecting and I feel like in our conversation just sharing our stories and our experiences that dinner felt like ours, right. Because when you connect with people who have maybe had a similar resonance or similar transformative journey and you can feel that person on the other side, and like really just be present. It’s powerful. So anyway, I’m just having a moment where I’m like, that dinner was really beautiful. And I’m so honored and like, grateful to have connected with you.

Blake Schofield 5:18
Hmm, thank you. Yeah, the dinner and then the conversation after dinner was probably my favorite part of the entire weekend.

Dr. Mel Krug 5:26
Yes.

Blake Schofield 5:27
And for me, it’s always been about that. Connecting with somebody on a deeper level, and really having conversations that matter. And so I’m excited because I know this one will. And what we share likely will really help change a number of people’s lives. It’s hard to know where to start. Because as we started, we could literally talk for hours, maybe what all start and share is a little bit about my personal journey in terms of some of my personal health issues. And when it came to understand, because I think if I had not had that understanding, I might also not have understood the uniqueness of what you do.

Dr. Mel Krug 6:03
Thank you.

Blake Schofield 6:04
So for anyone that’s listened long enough to my podcast, you would know that I suffered from a lot of health problems in my life. By the time I was 10 years old, I was having such significant issues. I was having sinus infections almost every month, I went and had all of the CAT scans and all of the stuff. I was sick incessantly, so much so that today I don’t even really like to take medicine because I was on so much amoxicillin as a child. And I probably shouldn’t be resistant at this point. And I had horrible migraine tension headaches that would literally take me out for a week at a time where I would just sit in my bedroom with no lights, no TV, no music, no nothing to try and deal. It was so bad that by the time I was 12, I had studied myself in the library and figured out that I thought that I had allergies, that must be it. I had all the signs and symptoms, I’d looked at all the data. And this is back when you’re like micro fish and you had to like…

Dr. Mel Krug 6:59
Oh, yeah.

Blake Schofield 7:00
Because I’m a lot younger than you, scroll through, and there was no internet. And I remember going to the doctor and telling him I think I have allergies because every time it rains I get really sick and right that’s a sign of symptom, the pollen coming from the trees. And I’ll never forget that he basically called me a control freak, told me How dare a 12 year old tell him what to do. And I was devastated. And of course my mom then promptly fired him. The allergy symptoms and horrible headaches continued. I ended up going and doing bio-feedback when I was a kiddo. This very, very cutting edge back then I didn’t know. Yeah, right.

Dr. Mel Krug 7:36
Yeah.

Blake Schofield 7:37
But for those who don’t know what bio-feedback is, essentially, they connected me to a bunch of wires on my hands and around my head. And I played what was essentially like, Legends of Zelda type of game where there was a castle, and there was a queen at the top or princess, and you had to rescue her by going through different rooms. And the only way you could go through the rooms was to basically learn how to relax your muscles and your body in order to actually create movement. I remember days and days of doing this with no movement, I was never going to achieve it. But I remember so clearly the pixelated screen, and eventually making progress and movement and learning how to do that. And that’s ultimately how I resolved the majority of the really horrible migraine tension headaches that I had, it completely changed my life, and helped me have a tool to be able to change that. Today I now know the power of that work far more infinitely than I did back then. And we’ll touch on that in a little bit. But it really helped improve a lot of things for me. So then proving my allergies, it took me five doctors and another seven years to finally find someone who had allergy test me at 19 of which I found out I had over 50 things I was allergic to and I have been through the journey and everything you could possibly do to treat allergies over the last 30-ish years. And sinus surgery. I mean just the whole thing.

Blake Schofield 9:01
And that was probably one of the biggest and has been the biggest vain medical problem of my life. Until I hit my 20s I have a really bad car accident. I ended up being bedridden ended up unable to physically move like a pain was so excruciating. Went to a chiropractor, did a lot of physical therapy work to do that. Then later in my 20s got hit with a horrible like sciatic back pain, had such severe pain, I couldn’t walk, in and up multiple times having back injections to be able to move. There were periods of time of which I was basically in a wheelchair, couldn’t go anywhere without that wheelchair, to get like to the state fair and things I just couldn’t walk. And you know, had improved in a lot of those fronts until 2016 when I was in California, and ended up with excruciating pain on the right side of my neck had always had a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders. And so I just thought a massage would fix it. Needless to say weeks passing I’m starting having tingling down both of my arms, I realized this is clearly a bigger issue, go to find out, I have bulging discs in my neck, disc degeneration and all of these problems. And, you know, did physical therapy again and proved it, but then found myself through many parts of my life in the last number of years, still dealing with extreme pain in my shoulders and neck and I had gotten to a place that I think is where almost everybody gets to, which is complacency.

Blake Schofield 10:28
This is just my life, this is just the way it’s going to be, this is just how I’m going to have to deal with things. Funny enough, it was the allergies that caused me to seek alternatives. I got to a place where I said, Good gracious, I’m willing to spend any amount of money if I could just resolve this problem. If someone could get rid of these allergies, I have to pay them. And I started seeking help. Basically, I’ve done all these things. Nothing’s worked. And people told me go to acupuncture. And I was like, That’s odd. I talk to people that said, Yeah, acupuncture works. So I ended up finding a chiropractor here in the Dallas area, on his website, he had acupuncture, I go to see them. Sure enough, they’re no longer doing acupuncture anymore. But he starts talking to me about my neck and does X rays. And he’s like, You are way out of whack. And if you don’t fix this, you’re gonna be in big trouble. And it was a shock to me. Because in that moment, I realized how used to the pain I had gotten. And I had just accepted how bad it was. Well, through working with him for about six months, two to three times a week, it fundamentally changed how I felt on a day to day basis, I can move my neck, I didn’t have all this pain. And I realized, wow, rapid change can happen. Now since then, I’ve been able to through a lot of the things I’ve learned about the connection of our minds and our bodies, I’ve been able to not just no longer have neck pain, but I’ve resolved probably 95% of my allergy problem.

Dr. Mel Krug 12:04
Yeah.

Blake Schofield 12:05
So why do I share this really long story, I share this really long story because I know I’m not alone in this, you might not have allergies, you might not have the back problem, but you probably have something. And you may have tried traditional medicine, and you may have tried all of the things, and you likely have gotten to where I got, whereas you just resolve it. This is just as good as it’s going to get. And when I met Mel, and we started talking about her journey and what she does, I instantly knew the power of her work, the power of what she’s uncovered, because it’s been a part of the journey for me. And so I’m excited for you to be able to share your personal journey, what you’ve learned, because so many more people can benefit from understanding that there are way more impactful ways to improve your health. And through understanding the mind body connection, you truly can change the quality of your life in a massive way.

Dr. Mel Krug 12:57
Absolutely. I’m like having an experience over here. Like just hearing. And I know you’ve shared parts of your journey and parts of your story with me when we first connected. But it never, not one story like this hearing someone choose something different for their life. It never seems to like go unnoticed in my system of like witnessing someone experience the power of their body being able to heal themselves, whether it was potentially through acupuncture, clearly at that moment, it was not it was through chiropractic, but that is the power of holistic healing. That is the power of chiropractic is helping people return back home to what’s always been there is the body’s ability to heal. And so I’m just like over here, just like almost in tears, like I love hearing the stories. And you’re absolutely right. There are people who are out there dealing with physical stuff, mental emotional stuff, spiritual stuff. And they don’t necessarily know until perhaps they hear a story like yours, or other people that there’s other ways. There’s other paradigms that are available to you if you choose it. So thanks for sharing that again. And the depth of it. You know, I’m just like, feeling it in my body right now.

Blake Schofield 14:21
It was a long story, but it was a very long journey. And it felt like I didn’t do it justice if I didn’t, if I didn’t tell it for what it was, which was long and painful. And thing. And I think that again, that is true of what most people’s journeys are. So with that said, I’m interested for you to share a little bit with our audience is I’ve monopolized the first 15 minutes or whatever. It’s a little bit of the audience about you, you know, who are you? What has your journey been? And how ultimately did you end up discovering the body’s ability to heal and finding the passion really around doing this work to help other people too?

Dr. Mel Krug 14:59
Yeah, well, similar to you, I did not necessarily grow up with, you know, holistic stuff. I did not grow up knowing even what chiropractic was, I did not grow up with knowing what acupuncture was. So I want to be clear with your listeners that, you know, I’ve had my own transformation. And I was like any other kid growing up where I dealt with stuff, I didn’t really know what was going on. So at a young age, I experienced sexual trauma from the ages of about four to eight, multiple times. And I share that now because at the time, I didn’t have words for it. I didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t know what was going on. I just dealt with it. And as I grew up and gotten to my teenage years, I suffered from just lots of body stuff, I had a lot of negative talk on my body, I dealt with menstrual cycle issues. And to the point where my period felt like there was a knife jabbing me in my uterus, I would bleed through to the bed. I don’t know how I mean, I’m just a real person. I’m a straight up person, right? I’m a doctor, I deal with this stuff every day. So I want to be straight with you all like it was, it was serious. And I would just get brushed aside. They’re like, Oh, well, you have a period. So like you just deal with it right? Similar to you, Blake, where it’s like, oh, well, this is just how it is to be a woman. This is just how it is. So I dealt with that growing up. I dealt with my parents getting divorced at a young age at about 10. And that created its own, like mental emotional instability, right.

Dr. Mel Krug 16:31
And at a young age, you know, age 14, I started getting into drugs and alcohol because we as humans, always are trying to find balance. We’re always trying to find homeostasis. And my way of doing that was to numb out. So I started drinking at a young age. I started, you know, smoking weed at a young age. And at the same time, I also got addicted to overachievement, right. I was a straight A student, I, you know, was the captain of every sports team. So I did all the things to try to numb out all this stuff that was happening within me. As I got older, closer to my 20s, you know, I was always an athlete. So I started playing rugby when I was about 18. And if anyone knows the sport of rugby, the joke is that it’s a drinking team with you know, her brother, you drink as the sport and rugby is just the side thing, right? So I got into rugby, still dealing with all this stuff, starting dealing with just aches and pains at that and still dealing with my menstrual cycle stuff still dealing this mental emotional instability. And I felt like the only way I knew because no one educated me differently was while I just pop some ibuprofen, or I take a couple shots of whiskey and like not deal with it, right? And mind you growing up with a single parent, they do the best they can with the resources they have. And my mom was not one to bring me into the doctor’s office. She’s like, Oh, Melissa, just rub some dirt in it. And you’re fine, right? Because she had her own myriad of stuff.

Dr. Mel Krug 18:01
So I get into college, I start playing rugby. And sure enough, I’m at a tryout and my friend tackles me. And I land on my shoulder. And I went from feeling like on top of the world athlete to feeling like I was 80 years old, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t sleep laying down. I had to sleep in like either reclined bed, or a chair in order to actually fall asleep and feel like I could breathe. So the very thing, this rugby community, this very thing that I felt like I was gaining some traction in my life that felt really connected and really healing for me, it was taken away from me, in a matter of like seconds. Now at the time, they had a personal trainer, and he did some work with my shoulders. And he said, you know you should really go to this chiropractor. It’s like, okay, I don’t really you know, I never really heard the term, right? So I go to this chiropractor. And I’m not one to like, I don’t like to bash other doctors. I don’t like to bash other techniques. It was an okay experience, right? I healed my shoulders. I got back on the rugby pitch. But I was still kind of dealing with this, this other stuff in life, you know that I’d probably started from those moments of even birth, right. And I couldn’t say that back in the day. But now that I know the process of trauma and the nervous system and healing. Things don’t always start the day before. Oftentimes, they can start years before. And all of a sudden, the whispers that we don’t listen to turn into a scream.

Dr. Mel Krug 19:33
So my rugby coach at the time said, Hey, you should go see this other chiropractor, they do something different. And I was like, Well, I don’t know chiropractor do the same thing. Like I didn’t really know. So I go to this other chiropractor and in my 20s, you know I’m in college, and before he even touched my spine and my nervous system. He educated me on the vital importance of unless we get to the underlying wound and the trauma that we’ve experienced whether it’s mental, emotional, physical, spiritual. Unless we address that in your neurology, we’re only going to be scratching the surface of health. And you can continue to play this Whack a Mole game of taking my doll, or you know, shoving down the pain with your strategies of choice, or you can choose to reorient the trajectory of your life. And so I did, I went to the chiropractor, multiple times a week, I was paying cash out of pocket as a student, because I saw the value of like, I want to either get my life back, or really change how I’m oriented in my reality. So I go to see his chiropractor. And his technique is just so different, right, and my low back pain starts to go away. My menstrual cycles start to get better, this weight I was carrying for so long just starts to shut and mind you, I didn’t go to the chiropractor to like lose weight.

Dr. Mel Krug 20:56
But I just started noticing like this fog lifting from my reality. And from that moment on, you know, it took some time, right, from that moment on, I said, Hmm, I thought this was about back and neck pain, when in reality, this is about my life, because everything in your life is filtered through your nervous system. So I’m having this healing experience. And from that moment on, I said, this is what I want to do, you know, this has really impacted my life. This has impacted how I play rugby, how I relate to past experiences with my parents, how I relate to myself. And so I enrolled in chiropractic school, got in, and here we are, it’s 2023, I started my practice in 2017. And every time I share the story, it just reminds me of what’s possible for not only myself and my continued journey, but other people too, and even sharing your story, Blake, like, I am just honored to be able to share that. But it was a journey, you know, like you it was a journey, I didn’t start just one, one and done right. It’s a continuous evolution of self. So that’s how I am here today sitting in my office and talking with you all.

Blake Schofield 22:07
I love it, there’s several pieces that you shared a couple, I definitely want to dig deeper on. But I do want to share, you know, I’ve been in many chiropractors. And there’s a lot of variety and what chiropractic does, and I would be remiss to say the last chiropractor, I went to very beneficial, extremely beneficial. But I wouldn’t have been able to fully resolve all of the other issues if I had not done additional things. I think a lot of chiropractors are following the methodology and the bulk of it as opposed to understanding what you talked about, which is understanding the holistic and the root cause. I think that’s important to state that there is a difference.

Dr. Mel Krug 22:46
Yeah.

Blake Schofield 22:47
In the same way that there’s a difference with every coach that you work with, or every boss that you have, right, is that, there can be a foundation, but then what’s built upon that foundation? Or what is the distinction about how that person does that. And I love what you said, because what’s been ruminating so much for me lately. I talked about, you know, here at The Bridge to Fulfillment®, we solve the root cause of why people are unfulfilled, right, we think it’s the boss or the job or the whatever. But I consistently see very rarely that that’s actually the truth. And my whole life, what I’ve seen is a lot of people desperately seeking the solutions, but it’s almost always band aids. And so when you said, you know, we have to get to the root cause of it, I was like, yes, 100%, because it’s so much deeper. And that was actually what I was thinking about this morning, that it’s the challenge that we have in life is that we’re approaching things from a very surface level standpoint. And we’re not going deeply enough. And it’s through the going deeply enough that you can really make rapid and massive transformational change in ways that you couldn’t imagine.

Blake Schofield 23:52
And so you talked about how you began to realize the interconnectivity of all of these things. And that what you were experiencing physically were manifestations of trauma, or emotions, or things sort of trapped in your body, your experience. That is also what I have come to learn, and believe strongly in and understand, and really have as a key piece of my work. And I’m interested if you can to try and share for people who this is like mind blowing, right? Like white, my back problem could actually be caused by, you know, past trauma or emotions or things I’ve not processed and I would venture that probably the majority of people listening, they probably don’t know that because I didn’t know that. How can you explain some of that in a way to help kind of connect the dots because once you see the dots connected, then you’re like, Oh, now it makes sense to me. Why these things work or why people say these things, but I didn’t understand the depth of it to be able to connect that.

Dr. Mel Krug 24:54
Yeah, no, and that’s I think that’s so vital to speak to not only in this conversation, but in culture because listeners and people I’ve worked with too, they’ve lived a life and into a paradigm that is so compartmentalized, like your mind is over here. So when you have a mind problem, you go to a psychiatrist, if you have a foot problem, you go to a podiatrist, if you have a heart problem, you go to a cardiologist, right? When in reality, what’s the common denominator, it’s your body and your central nervous system. And that’s why I like to say body mind or mind body, because it’s not separate. It’s one unit. And I always like to ask people, this when they’re first learning this work, is I say, Okay, if you have a thought, right?

Dr. Mel Krug 25:33
If you have a recurring thought, or you have a recurring emotion, asking, where is that? Where is that in your body, because we think that our thoughts and our emotions in our head, but when I actually start to work with people and teach this work, 99.9% of the time, that’s thought pattern we have, that emotional frequency that we experience, there’s somewhere, it’s located in the body. And in trauma, which is really just a perception that we don’t have the resources to respond to the demands of life, in trauma, whether it’s emotional trauma, physical trauma, spiritual trauma, mental trauma, if we don’t feel as though we have the energetic capacity to feel that, sense that, experience that, and hold our own alignment, the first thing that changes is our breath. So we go from breathing low and slow, to high. Right. And even if when you’re listening to this, and you hear the word, emotion, or you hear me talking about trauma, and you go to your own experiences, I want you to ask yourself, and ask your body, where am I noticing this in my body? And chances are, you’re gonna feel that somewhere in your spine, you’re gonna feel that somewhere in your belly, you’re gonna feel that somewhere in your body.

Dr. Mel Krug 26:56
Unfortunately, our world, again has segmented them. So bridging that gap. The first question you have to ask is, where is this emotion in my body? Where is this thought in my body? And the more you ask the question, if you’re new to this work, you’re gonna start to discover, Hmm, I’ve had these like head issues, I’ve had these headaches, I’ve had these allergies. For me, it was my menstrual cycle. Because the way that I suppress my trauma was, you know, I shoved it in my uterus. I shoved it down. I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t experience the emotion the moment because it didn’t feel safe. So asking yourself, Where do I feel this in my body, okay. And that’s how we can start to bridge that gap of that mind body connection, and knowing that they’re not separate. What happens in trauma to complete that thought I just had to complete that statement. What happens in trauma is we actually do separate and we actually disassociate in our nervous system because if our body doesn’t feel safe in its resources, we will either disassociate and hyper intellectualize will disassociate and go, some people go to more of a spiritual realm, which there’s a lot of gifts there, we just have to integrate them. Some people will numb out, there’s a lot of different ways that the body responds to trauma, where we actually, in our perception, create the fragment of the mind in the body. Okay, it’s fragments and it, it almost as a tear, when they’re still connected, our mind just thinks they’re separate.

Dr. Mel Krug 28:25
So when we start to heal trauma and become whole and return back to our wholeness, we can be more than that unified experience. But trauma will separate us to protect us. So the perception you have of them being separate is an intelligent response to the nervous system. Because, you know, just to be real with you all when I was experiencing the multiple experiences with my babysitter growing up, I didn’t feel safe in my body to feel my body, to feel those parts of my body, to feel those parts of my pelvis. So what did I do? I disassociated as though I was viewing the experience, my mind went up here, my body froze. And so physical symptoms are the solution. And what I mean by that is, those symptoms are giving you a wake up call, to return back to your wholeness, where mind, body, and spirit are one. So I don’t want to get too meta, but that can be an initial take for those of you if this is new, that can help you start to connect the dots of like my mind, and my emotions, and my thoughts are not separate from my body. And those symptoms are trying to bring you back to wholeness. So I hope that helps Blake describe that.

Blake Schofield 29:40
I love that. I think we spent a lot of time as a society focused on our brain and our thoughts and how we’re processing things and I have really come to understand, you as somebody got a psychology degree it’s focused a lot on, on that I saw the patterns that this wasn’t working. It’s ultimately I think why when I was a junior in college, I decided not to become a psychologist because I could see that things weren’t working. Because we’re, and I don’t mean this in a rude way, therapy absolutely can be helpful in the right circumstances. But what I see a lot is a retelling of the same story, which keeps us caught in the same exact trauma and the same exact feelings and none of it actually processes. And so when I came to really understand about this, in a really significant way was that all of the symptoms I had been experiencing, were to your point telling me something, but because of the society, we’re so used to labeling them and giving a pill, or labeling them and saying it’s XYZ, putting a band aid on it, we aren’t actually addressing the root cause. And it wasn’t until things got so significant to your point, yelling, break the door down, that I got to a place where I said, I guess I can’t keep doing there’s got to be a better way.

Blake Schofield 30:53
And, you know, I’ve been studying actually this fairly significantly for about the last six months or so, diving deep to understand the experience that I’ve had and what I consistently see in life today. And I can just tell those of you that are listening, that might be like, Wow, this is blowing my mind, or I don’t know how to deal with this, that it can start with something so simple. Like, most of the time, if you’re unaware of how you feel, and you don’t know how you feel in your body, that means that you’ve had trauma, and you’ve literally disassociated, and usually the people who struggle to feel anything in their body, that means that you have an even larger opportunity.

Dr. Mel Krug 31:30
Yes.

Blake Schofield 31:31
And if you can’t feel anything, or you’re just learning, one of the best ways I think to do it is when you’re going to bed at night or first thing in the morning, because you’re not thinking you’re not processing. So you’re able to like really recognize, Oh, I have tension in my shoulder or my lower back hurts, and just begin there. And when you have experiences that feel emotional for you, good and bad, where am I feeling it in my body, just beginning to gain some awareness of that can be super, super powerful. But like I said, I’d love to connect the understanding of this to also broaden it to understand the body awareness of your feelings. And what you’re experiencing is super important to bring that back and connection. But also to understand that many of the physical symptoms and things we experience can be resolved. Without I think what well, they can be resolved. And I think often we think resolving or dealing with trauma has to be this long drawn out painful thing for therapy. And it really doesn’t, there’s so many powerful ways to be able to release the stored energy that’s trapped in your body, in your tissues, in a way that’s powerful and effective and very rapid. And it’s incredible to see the impacts that we can make, I think it’s just not very widely known.

Dr. Mel Krug 32:50
Yeah, transformation, it happens in a moment, you know, I get a lot of people haven’t gone to school like I have as a doctor. And when you actually study physiology, transformation in the cells happens like that, it’s a matter of are we willing to and open to letting parts of ourselves that we’ve perhaps identified with or as you beautifully said, Blake, like, I agree with you that I’ve studied a lot of trauma work, like a lot of the loops that we can create when we just talk about it. It keeps us in our headspace, and like we’re not connected in our physiology. And sometimes we can get really attached to that identity that we’ve created. Because that’s all we know ourselves to be. That’s all we know ourselves to be. And so sometimes in will oftentimes in resolution and reclamation and transformation, the change is instantaneous, the transformation is instantaneous. It’s like how willing are you to accept that new reality for yourself. And when I say self, also your cells because your cells are turning over every single day. And so you’re a brand new person, after seven years, including your nervous system, you have a brand new stomach. After about four months, you have a brand new sinus cavity, right your bones that’s generally about an 18 month process.

Dr. Mel Krug 34:20
So then we have to ask ourselves in this question, why is it that I’m dealing with these chronic physical things for years on end, if my body’s turning over? What’s my relationship to my body and resolution happens when you choose to reclaim that that new sense of self and not be attached to these old ways and labels and staying stuck trauma loops, trauma patterns. Something I wanted to speak to as well is that when we go into the I don’t know or we’re so stuck in our head that’s what we call more of the freeze trauma response and And that’s again, because we haven’t felt a level of connection and safety in our body to process the emotions, or to process the experience, to move on with our life. Right, we can get stuck talking about it. But it’s like, your nervous system wants to clear that energy. And those symptoms are calling you back home. So now I could go on a huge tangent with that. But I really that’s like, what I get really excited about with transformation is like it happens in a moment. It’s how willing are we to, like, accept that moment, as that gets to be your new reality, and you get like your worth, and you are worthy to experience that, you know, it’s not just about pain. But what’s your capacity to experience pleasure in life, and not just sexual, not just intimacy, but literally pleasure in, in your career in your, you know, family life, and your job? Like, you get to experience that. And that’s part of like having alignment, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. So anyway, I digress.

Blake Schofield 36:00
No, you didn’t digress at all, I love it. I mean, obviously, this is a place you and I are both very passionate, and you know, in many ways came to the same conclusions. I’ve done a tremendous amount of investing in personal development in the last five plus years. And each step you learn something new, and you start applying, and if you’re like me, I am a person that connects dots at like the super highest level and really be able is able to see it. And that is what I have come to see to be true is there’s such power and spending the time, energy, money, to invest in yourself. And the vast majority of suffering that people go through is completely solvable, and in many cases, unnecessary. When you began to understand that we create our own suffering.

Dr. Mel Krug 36:50
Yeah.

Blake Schofield 36:51
And that we have far more power to change and create the lives that we want. And it’s definitely my mission to be able to help people understand that because there are so many ways of which I suffered in my life. And I can now see with the understanding I have, at the tools I have, how staying in the mental loops, how holding on to things, how looking at things and trying to solve them with band aids, ultimately created or just allow this loop of suffering, and just even talking about the human body, the amazingness of the human body, right? We all think that emotions come first, but we don’t we feel it in our body first, right? And then we label it an emotion and then we give it a story.

Dr. Mel Krug 37:35
Yep.

Blake Schofield 37:36
And I’ve talked for anyone that’s listened to this podcast long enough, you know, I talk about that our, our beliefs, create our thoughts, our thoughts, create our actions, and our actions, create our outcomes. And all of these things are all aligned. So if you’re storing all of this trauma and all of this energy in your body, and then you’ve attached it to a belief system, anytime something in life comes, it’s going to trigger you, you’re going to be experiencing that over and over and over again. And when I really came to understand like, Oh, it’s not just the removal of the belief system, which is, by the way, incredibly powerful work.

Dr. Mel Krug 38:13
Yes.

Blake Schofield 38:14
But also understanding that you need to let go and release that from your body, your nervous system, your tissues that are storing all of this stuff. That’s not process, then it’s a complete and full release.

Dr. Mel Krug 38:26
Yeah.

Blake Schofield 38:27
And you said earlier, I left it when you talked about you did the work that you felt lighter 100%, I’d say I felt like 20 pounds lighter. And it’s the hardest thing to explain until you experience it. And it’s something cognitively, that can be really difficult to understand. And so if you are listening, you’re like, I don’t cognitively understand this doesn’t make sense to me. I would just say that’s okay. Leave an open loop. Yeah, right. Meaning I don’t have to immediately solve the problem, I can listen to something that is counter to my belief, or I don’t know how I feel about it. And I don’t have to solve it. I don’t have to decide if it’s right or wrong. I just am open to the fact that maybe there’s new information, I don’t know. And you can allow yourself to explore that perhaps there is a solution for which you have never explored that might be the very thing that you’ve been looking for.

Dr. Mel Krug 39:19
Yeah, if people are very analytical who some people who are in analytical to listen to this, we’re understanding like light energy, and sound energy. When you look at your cells on a cellular atomic level. Everything is literally light and sound. Everything is vibration. Everything is frequency. So when Blake and I talk about we feel light, you’re actually feeling the essence of your true physiology. And your body is the vessel in which you experience all things in life. Your nervous system is the vessel, at least the three dimensional vessel, right? The Earth body vessel, and the way I like to describe what you’re speaking to, Blake, is if our nervous system is attuned to a frequency, pick your frequency, is it jazz? Is it hard rock? Is it blues, is it hip hop? The goal, in my opinion, I guess, and what I share with my practice members and clients is, we want to experience the full bandwidth. Because that’s what makes you whole, we want to experience the whole orchestra of life. You know, just because you’ve ascended to a state of consciousness of light and feeling fulfilled, you’re gonna have moments where like, you feel sad. But that doesn’t mean that’s who you are, you’re feeling it in your system, but it doesn’t need to become a story about your identity.

Dr. Mel Krug 40:38
So what I tell people is the goal with shifting your nervous system and making trauma whole again, in your whole being and dissolving that, is let’s shift you from only listening your radio station, if you think of your nervous system in your brain is like a radio signal. Whatever signal you’re emitting, you’re gonna attract that frequency. And so if you’re tuned to the blues, you’re just gonna like go in life and listen to the blues. Whereas when you start to open up your physiology, your emotions, and your being, you get to one day listen to the blues, the next day listen to jazz, and next day listen to rock, and like, guess what, you get to experience all of those frequencies. And like that is the magic and zest of life. It’s not going to be happy go lucky all the time. But in my opinion, like, I’m up to creating more human experiences, where we’re whole, where like you can see and embody the darkness at times and be human and feel that, and then on the other side, you can have bliss and euphoria and like you get to experience the full range and be okay with open loops, and feeling that in your body. I mean, the way I describe it is like embodiment is the way to enlightenment, at least in the work that I do. And I think with the work that you do, Blake, just hearing more like it’s, it’s so synergistic. It’s all the layers, you’re all of it. But I just wanted to speak to an analogy. I think the radio station can really help people start to understand like, my body and my posturing and my nervous system is attuned to a frequency. That’s immediately like those are the glasses, right? You’re gonna have the rose colored glasses, and that’s going to be your reality.

Blake Schofield 42:12
So good. I really loved it. And here I am, like, oh, hard time is almost up. So I want to make sure for those that are listening, who are like, Oh my gosh, I love what Mel’s sharing and I’d love to learn more. How can they find you? And I think you gave us a little freebie as well.

Dr. Mel Krug 42:28
Yes, all the freebies because I want to teach you all. I’m a big believer in and I know our mentoring someone we know Nick Pearson like that living to learn, giving to earn, whatever fulfills you in life. So I’m on Instagram, I’m a millennial. So you can find me at Dr. Mel Krug. And I’m on Instagram, I’m on Facebook, my office is Inspired Life Chiro Center. We do a lot of teaching on those platforms about these concepts. So that’s where you can find me most often. And I have links to my website, drmelkrug.com. And just come find me on there. Come say hi, you know, send me a message. I’m like one of those people that will actually probably respond to you. And yeah, I think I gave your listeners the masterclass on trauma. So if you’re listening and you’re like, Okay, this all sounds good. I don’t really know where to start. The free masterclass will walk you through understanding how you specifically your nervous system defaults in trauma, which don’t count those can be small things right, falling off a curb, tripping, you know, whatever, or big T’s. So understanding how you respond can help you actually start to shift it and change it. So that’s my gift to you all.

Blake Schofield 43:39
Thank you so much. And for those of you that are listening, I hope that you got a number of nuggets of wisdom and inspiration to see that you can live a happier, more fulfilled, more vibrant life. Thanks again for joining us. Until next time, have a great week.

Blake Schofield 44:02
Thanks for joining me today. Rather than hope the grass will be greener, identify what the right next step is. We can help you do just that. Get clarity on where you are in your journey to career fulfillment, where you’re headed, optimal paths to get there, and the right next step to take. Start your complimentary personalized career fulfillment plan at https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan. Again, you can get your personalized career fulfillment plan at https://thebridgetofulfillment.com/plan Thanks again for joining and have a great week ahead!