How to Heal the Whole Person with Dr Charlie Cropley, ND & Dr Node Smith, ND on The Healers Café with Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND

little further and went back to school and got an entire tire different degree in order to actually go to medical school. And so, and I’ve fallen in love with the naturopathic profession, much like one falls in love with their family, or you know, when they have a child and then they fall in love with their family all over again.

 

Manon Bolliger  05:05

And how is it that you, you were able to connect as I’m my understanding is that you’re working together with Charlie, and how did this magical union happen?

 

Node Smith  05:22

Yeah, I could probably, I’ll answer that, I guess, Charlie. You know, Charlie, and I, to me, we have very much of a soulmate relationship. And I feel that Charlie is someone who I’ve shared…I share the deepest parts of my worldview, my belief system, with my passion for life. And we met doing these experiential retreats in Portland. I was running a nonprofit, and we were interfacing students with elder doctors in order to get more elder wisdom and traditional teachings into the schools in an experiential way. We’re doing these retreats, outdoor, no electricity over a long weekend. And Charlie was one of the biggest supporters of me during that process, and really took me under his wing and taught me how to not only counsel individuals and showed me the foundation of self-healing but began a very deep and prolonged kind of experiential tutorial and how to relate to people and how to lead people how to how to be a leader in a way that is not aggressive and not violent. And it’s true to the principles of medicine that we practice. So that’s been our relationship for the last 10 years.

 

Manon Bolliger  07:13

Okay, well, and Charlie, maybe if you could expand a little bit on your life’s work about self-healing, because I think it’s such, we’re in a culture that still believes you go to the doctor, and they will fix you and you abdicate your responsibility you don’t take charge of your health you don’t worry about what goes in and out of your body. And so, you know, for doctors to stand up for self-healing, which is one of my big beliefs as well I’d love to know more about your work and what that means.

 

Charlie Cropley  07:55

Thank you. My work began with and continues the core of my work is my own living of these principles and practices. And it’s as I say, it’s been my destiny and out of living it I was guided to become a naturopathic doctor and I absolutely loved all that I learned and beginning as a primary care physician essentially using naturopathic therapeutics. I began from day one offering classes to my patients and was always interested as you are in, we could say the whole person and I was…I had direct experience myself of the power of eating the power of movement, the power of my thoughts, right, the power of providing and this was so clear to me that this I can count on, and I’ll give you an example. When I was an intern. And in my third year of naturopathic college, I had a patient with rheumatoid arthritis. And I found myself going through this book looking for how do you cure or treat rheumatoid arthritis. And I went, people been having rheumatoid arthritis for as long as there have been human beings. And I’m still doing we haven’t found a way right to heal rheumatoid arthritis. And I said Bosh, I know. I know beyond a doubt what will improve this. Through eating and through this person’s power to bring healing to themselves by improving their behaviors. And, I have gone forward. I’ve always needed that confidence that certainty that what I’m telling you absolutely works…absolutely works. And so, with that the combination of the experience from my own life, and then the love of teaching this to people and seeing them, respond to it, and love it and get real results that we could count on. It’s grown over 45 years.

 

Manon Bolliger  10:45

So would you agree or disagree with the statement that healing is actually simple.

 

Charlie Cropley  10:58

There’s a saying that…it’s something like this, it’s the simplicity on this side, if you would have doing the work isn’t worth anything. Right. Seeing the simplicity on the other side of doing the work, right. Like God, it’s so simple. However, as you know, it’s complex and I say that healing ourselves, is the most challenging of all challenges that we have. Unquestionably the most rewarding of all challenges that we have. And in a sense, it is not the most challenging because the challenge of being sick is horrible. Right, the life is far worse than the life of being healthy and living a healthful life and meeting the challenges in ourselves to being able to truly care for ourselves. Affirm you and me and know, perhaps it’s simple, right?

 

Manon Bolliger  12:29

You know, I find that often people think that complicated things are necessary, or you need many things, or many procedures or instrumentation and many drugs, or many, you know, natural things, whatever, but it’s many of them.

 

Node Smith  12:51

It’s very simple. It’s very simple, that there’s an obstacle in front. Right, the wall is there, taking down the wall might be very, very difficult and complex, but all that really needs to happen is the wall needs to come down.

 

Manon Bolliger  13:08

Yeah, and I think too, I know from both your experience as well down and you so let me ask you this from both because you both interview people together, when they come to see you in the clinic, and you have three visits, right to do this full interview. So, what is it that…what is it that you do there? And I’m kind of referring to this wall, how do you deal with the wall that looks like it’s the encasing in the house, and that there’s nothing beyond it to the person walking in, right? So yeah, explain a bit your process and how your practice works, either of you.

 

Node Smith  13:58

Totally, totally. Do you want me to start and then you can kind of…?

 

Charlie Cropley  14:01

I do. Yes, I do.

 

Node Smith  14:02

Okay. Yeah, this is an this is an awesome question. Manon and it’s something that yeah, we have a three-visit intake sequence, it’s, it’s very extensive. And part of the reason that we do that is because much of the work that we do kind of exists at the edge of what a…what most doctors consider their limit of care. And so there there’s a lot of information and a lot of diagnostic information that is important to Charlie and I that a normal like a regular doctor, most doctors would not really find relevant. The manner in which people speak the types of concepts that they bring up in a conversation, how long they speak before resting and allowing additional input, how long they concentrate on a topic, the intensity that they that they communicate about a topic. But furthermore, then that, Charlie and I, our entire practice is rooted in teaching people skillfulness in four behaviors, eating, moving and rest. That’s one behavior, how we move and rest our body. And then the last two are, how we think and how we relate. Now, the eating and the moving and rest are things that generally a naturopathic doctor most naturopathic doctors see the relevance in and many people who come to us have been to naturopathic doctors, they’ve had dietary prescriptions, they’ve taken supplements to help with their sleep, they know that they should be exercising, but these thinking and relating elements influence the way that we eat and the way that we move, as well as influence directly our symptomatology, right, the pain that we’re experiencing, the digestive complaints that we’re experiencing. And so, we start out talking about these physical things, and intertwine kind of a diagnostic evaluation of how thinking or relating influence those things and then how they stand on their own. And this process is…it’s extensive, it takes time to build a relationship with a patient in order for these things to fully paint the picture of what a patient is experiencing, and also what they need, how exactly their behaviors are injuring them. And then our final visit is a is a very unique process. It’s an entire hour dedicated to a physical exam. And this physical exam is not as much for Charlie and I, as it is an experiential process by which a patient begins to understand how sensing their body, how moving their body influences directly the health that they experience. And this is…it’s something that most patients come away from, with an absolute transformation of how they’re looking at their health, how they’re looking at their body. And that process is just not something that can be done in a single visit. That’s the origin of the three visits.

 

Manon Bolliger  18:03

Wow, this is so exciting. I just the couple things that I’m really getting from this is, which I am in total agreement is the doctor patient relationship, but it’s time to reflect on the whole picture, not just the body part, but how everything fits in, but I love at the end because not only are physical exams, not being done on some level. And now that we’re in this specialized one body part, look of the universe. You know, most doctors are I mean, medical doctors don’t even look at the entire person. And you know, many of the patients I saw they said Well, when’s the last actual physical exam, oh, they just checked this piece. And it doesn’t teach you that connection to your body. And it’s funny because I, in my practice, I also did Bowen therapy, but which I did like a shorter version just for people to connect to their enteroception how their body feels that we’re actually able to connect to ourselves, because we live in such a disconnected world. So, I love this process. This is so exciting. It must be so rewarding. And the thing is you build a connection with patients that really end up trusting you but trusting themselves, you know, that’s brilliant.

 

Commercial Break  19:42

Hi, I’m Dr Manon Bolliger and I wanted to take a moment to thank you for watching these podcasts. If you haven’t subscribed, please do. Also feel free to leave comments and like it. This way more people get to find out about this work and about other choices for health. So, I think it’s really important that, that we all share this information, I have a free gift to you. It’s a seven-sequence email that has tips for every day. And so, a little insight about how to live your life when it comes to health. And it’s very much built on how I managed to overcome stage four cancer and what it took. So, I, I would love you to have this. And thank you once again, for listening to these podcasts.

 

Manon Bolliger  20:45

I’ve also heard you do clinical intensives is that a different process than this interview. Or is that something? What is that?

 

Node Smith  20:56

So, yeah, the clinical intensive process. So, something that we have discussed, and Charlie’s learned over a lifetime of practice is that patients need to be inside of a committed program in order to get the results that they’re really looking for. And I think that it is a model that is very much moving forward and being championed by a lot of doctors. And with this type of training and self-healing, we just find that it’s impossible to get the results that we expect, if individuals are simply booking an appointment when they are in acute crisis. And then yeah, and so we take people through our naturopathic health evaluation, which is a three-sequence visit, and there are assignments and therapies that are intertwined in that process. It’s not simply a diagnostic process. So, we are giving therapies and different things. And then we discuss, what exactly are the behaviors? What exactly are the trainings that someone needs in order to heal, like, how bad is their eating? You know, many people many, and you know, everyone, every doctor knows that patients have tried numerous diets and have not been successful, they’ve tried numerous exercise programs and not been successful. And it is not because diet and exercise don’t work. That is not what’s happening. It’s a level of skillfulness. It might be the type of diet, it might be how they’re eating, it might be emotional elements surrounding eating, and the same thing with exercise or movement. And so, we enroll people into a clinical intensive period, which is an eight-session sequence. And it can span between 8 and 16 weeks. And it is highly personalized. Charlie has 45 years of course material that we have to choose from in order to personalize programs. And it’s pretty radical, the degree of personalization that we’re able to facilitate with individuals using modules and videos and assignments and articles. And it’s very well packaged and intuitive for people to access and understand. And then Charlie and I are available during one-on-one sessions and check in calls throughout that period in a very structured way in order to hold that container, but also to ensure that someone is actually getting better. And if they’re not, to change their program so that it’s emphasizing what they actually need. And I think that’s what sets Charlie and I and our company is called Nourish Naturopathic Healing Arts. And it’s what sets us apart from other program-based approaches is that it’s not one program. It’s a program but it’s if you and your neighbor were to do a program with us, you would likely be getting different material based on what you actually need at that current point in your life.

 

Manon Bolliger  25:03

So, it’s like the patient journey that you’re able to do, thanks to the many years of experience and the materials that have been collected to kind of help the patient along. Right? So, is that that’s the new business model? Or you’ve always done it this way or, or?

 

Node Smith  25:26

No, it’s probably Charlie, Charlie should answer.

 

Charlie Cropley  25:31

No, I have not always done it this way. And again, I’m constantly learning and honing my skills as in this case, as a teacher and a doctor. The foundation that we work from is that of relationship. And we begin and end during the intensive with a teaching on the patient’s relationship to their illness and introduce the naturopathic perspective of illness as a message to us, right. And so, we begin to transform their relationship to their illness, and then the physical exam, we then look at their relationship to their body. And then we look at their relationship to each of the four behaviors to their eating, to their movement, to their thinking, and to their relationships with other people. And we’re, teaching them that how to…that their body, their mind, they are the only ones who know, and receive the messages from their body in their minds. And the awareness of that is transformative for them, that they do see that my ways of eating are harming they’re poisoning my body and stressing my body. And that only I am aware of this. And then they learn the means to make the difficult changes in their ways of eating by a relationship that is founded on kindness and truthfulness. And that is, as they grow in that they are empowered, they see and experience their own self-healing power. And so that’s one of the focuses throughout the intensive.

 

Manon Bolliger  28:11

I feel like we must have been twins. I just I’m thinking, wow, you know, I think I even have that in my book What Patients Don’t Say if Doctors Don’t Ask. It’s the mindful doctor patient relationship. And I’m like, yeah, you know, the patients know the answer. They do. It just that we don’t trust, what we’re hearing from within, because we’re disconnected. And we have this plethora of, you know, thoughts.

 

Charlie Cropley  28:41

And the sickness is the remedy. Rather than a relationship to our sickness and our symptoms, that is to make this go away. So, they’ll feel happy, they learn that they themselves are the medicine and to come closer to it. So, for example, person, most of us are highly self-critical. And, by forming a caring, compassionate relationship with our self-critic, we listen to what we’ve been afraid to listen to. And in in the process, that is how healing happens. Our central message to people is that you yourself, are the source of your healing. You are the medicine really, really your presence contains the intelligence and the power to heal your very present. Just go be in relationship with your self-critic and not just go do that. That’s the skill that we teach them. How to do that.

 

Manon Bolliger  30:00

We’re almost at a time. But I mean, this is such a wonderful share, and is there anything else that you would like to leave, either to doctors or healthcare practitioners that you know, don’t know about your work or to patients that are interested in your work? Because I kind of attract both? So, yeah, feel free?

 

Node Smith  30:25

Yeah, I would say that. Another key piece that we have not discussed is the role of community in our work. And community is one of the primary perhaps the biggest driver of health, and certainly a behavioral change, that the community, the atmosphere, the culture around us, largely dictates our ability to sustain a healthy lifestyle, make healthy choices. And it is an element that we are working tirelessly to launch a community support platform. That is not only for our patients, but also will be available to other doctors, other practitioners who meet who would like to use a platform to interface with their clients, with their patients. But also know that their patients are getting support from other people who are learning about self-healing about self-care practices. This will be a platform where other doctors will have the ability to come on and give tutorials, give trainings, give teachings to their patients and other people’s patients.  So, kind of a yeah, a collective if you will, platform. So, we’re working on finding a platform for that. It’s most of it is built, and we hope to launch it within the next six months. It’s called Nourish. A community of self-healing.

 

Manon Bolliger  32:23

Well, that’s incredible. Wow, that’s, and it’s so needed. It’s so timely to Yeah, that’s really wonderful. And do you have any last words, Charlie, or?

 

Charlie Cropley  32:37

Let’s see. Um, I should have.

 

Manon Bolliger  32:57

I think you said you said it all before that was such a powerful thing.

 

Charlie Cropley  33:01

There is something I was thinking of and that is, when we make when we present the clinical intensive to our patients, we view it and explain it to them, that in our report of findings, this is what we see, taking place. You have MS, these are this is the way we see, to approach it through these behaviors. And we say to them, that this intensive that we’re going to do with you, is both its diagnostic, its therapeutic, and its prognostic, meaning, this is what we anticipate will happen. But we don’t know, at this time, really how effective these therapies are going to be, how your body’s going to respond to them. That’s one. And the other that we don’t know is how avid of a student you are going to be. And we will learn that over these next 8 to 16 weeks. And then at that point, we will have a much more informed prognosis. If you’re 40% better, based on what we’ve done, then our prognosis would say it will probably take this long in going forward. And if you have found yourself challenged in your eating in or movements, whatever it is, then that is what is impeding your progress and that we would recommend. This is what we will focus on going forward because that’s revealed itself as necessary for you to attain the healing that you want.

 

Manon Bolliger  35:08

So, it’s an ever-evolving prognosis and diagnosis for that matter, right? Nothing is seems to be permanent in that way.

 

Node Smith  35:21

I would love I would love to jump in and clarify something because Charlie and I often talk about this and there’s a gross disservice that a lot of patients have been delivered this idea that they can, that there’s a therapy, or something that they can do or take or a process, that they’re going to heal from chronic degenerative disease relatively quickly. And it’s not true. It takes years to heal from chronic degenerative disease, symptoms may abate quickly. But we all too often see people relapse into these disease states. Very quickly after working with very esteemed holistic doctors who are doing awesome work. But when those foundational elements are not addressed at a foundational level, and somebody’s entire life is not changed, they come back, these symptoms come back, the chronic degenerative disease state is it’s not far away after three months, after six months. You know, after a year, we have two patients that we’ve been working with for a year now. And they are transformed human beings, we look at them, they are a different person, by 100%, they’re not the same person without the symptom. They’re a different person, and they will not they will never get sick in exactly the same way, they will not slip back into their autoimmune disease in the same way. Again, so I think that just needs to, I wish more patients understood that coming forward or moving forward, because I think it would ameliorate a lot of frustration and annoyance at the lack of progress that happens sometimes or the plateaus that we hit, and then nothing happens for a few months. It’s a journey, it took a long time to get to where we are. And it’s it takes a long time to get out.

 

Manon Bolliger  38:03

I agree. Definitely. It’s a journey. And yeah, it’s it when you say foundation, it could be any of so many things, that is really…and often people think oh, it’s just, I’ll naturally remove this with that. And it doesn’t work that way. There may be a wrong so called wrong way of thinking or some self-sabotaging patterns that if you don’t address those, you’re in the same circle. So yeah, very, very good point. And I think that for our profession, that’s something that really needs to be clarified. We’re not just using natural things in the same dogma and belief system as allopathic medicine; we need to go way beyond that. So, I’m really thrilled to hear this.

 

Charlie Cropley  39:02

There are two things I think your our listeners would appreciate. One of them is the quality of relationship and communication that we have with our patients. And this has been called high touch. And, but however this is evolved, it took me most of my practice to realize that to stop acting like a doctor, meaning, and having the contact with my patients that a doctor has, and be true to what I needed to know about my patients and what I needed to communicate to them to get well because this isn’t…this is not medicine. This is the work of self-healing. And so, we Node and I there are patients that we’re texting them several times a day. Because that needs to be so, we need that information. Right? They need that information. And so, we have this level of connection with our patients. And then that’s a level of support that as well as I know, I don’t know anybody else that comes anywhere near doing this because they don’t do the same work as we do. And then, after seeing us after going through their intensive, they then we offer them an affordable means of continuing support. By entering into our program of nourish where we have given them, they’re trained, we’ve given them instructions on what they need to focus on for the next month or a period of time till they come back and see us again, then they’re in an organization with like-minded people that they can be in triads with and hold one another accountable, but they also have access to other doctors whose patients are there who specialize in pain and trauma and other things. And they have, we have regular meetings with them, we would have you come in and offer a class and there is this community of self-healing that we call nourish, that allows them to maintain that in an affordable fashion.

 

Manon Bolliger  41:37

Thank you. This has been so inspiring and thank you so much for both taking time out of your day to share this.

 

Charlie Cropley  41:45

Thank you, Manon.

 

Node Smith  41:46

Thank you, Manon.

 

Dr M (Manon Bolliger), ND

Thank you for joining us. For more information, go to DrManonBolliger.com.