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Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.
Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and I am back today with Dr. Jill Carnahan. It’s an absolute joy to get to speak with her. If you missed our first episode, we went deep on chronic illness, autoimmunity, trauma, and how to heal. And in this one, I was so excited to jump into a topic I don’t get to hear her talk about as much. We talk about unexpected miracles and how to live your life authentically and why this is so important, even relating to all of the physical aspects that we talk about in our first episode.
And I have followed Dr. Jill’s work for years. She’s incredibly qualified for her work in functional medicine and is known as your functional medicine expert. I have definitely benefited from reading and learning from her over the years. She’s a survivor of breast cancer, Crohn’s disease, and mold toxicity, and she routinely treats patients who are looking for solutions to their complex chronic symptoms and medical conditions. And I know several people who are personal friends who have gotten incredible results from working with her when nothing else seemed to be helping. She also is recently added executive producer, film writer of a new documentary to her extensive resume. It’s about her journey of overcoming illness and it’s called Doctor Patient and it will be released this year. I put lots of links to many of the things she mentions in both of our episodes in the show notes, which you can check out at wellnessmama.com. Let’s jump in and learn from the amazing Dr. Jill. Dr. Jill, welcome back.
Dr. Jill: Thank you.
Katie: So excited we get to have another conversation. And for any of you listening, if you missed our first one, Dr. Jill gave an amazing explanation of some of the roots of chronic disease and steps that can be really helpful in addressing those. And we even got to touch on the trauma piece. And there’s so many nuggets of wisdom in that episode. In this one, I would love to shift gears a little bit and learn from you in a little bit different of a realm that I have a feeling is still very synergistic and will build on our first conversation. And that is the topic of sort of unexpected miracles and living authentically. I think this is actually something that’s not talked about enough in the modern world and something that is really a struggle for a lot of people with a lot of competing ideas of what that even means. So again, we’re jumping into a very broad topic with a lot of nuance. But I would love if you could intro us into simply the concept of that to begin with, and then we’ll get to go deeper from there.
Dr. Jill: Yes. Oh, gosh, I could talk a lot about this. And what I want to share is just if I can, maybe some practical things, because some people think, oh, my gosh, I’m not a spiritual guru. I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m not Gandhi or whoever other people that we know that have been such examples of really like a high level of spiritual integrity and manifesting miracles. So at the core, what I’ve learned is, I wrote a chapter of my book around this. And it was literally sometimes when we’re writing or journaling, these insights and things can come because all of a sudden we start to see a pattern. And it was funny because I didn’t go into the book chapter thinking I had, like I didn’t know what I was going to write about. And as I looked at my life and saw this pattern, it came out and I was like, oh, this has been over and over again.
The title of the chapter is called Believe, Act, Wait. And I realized that over and over again, the miracles that happened in my life were this formula. And the formula was, I believe for something that something was possible. And usually that something was pretty big, pretty amazing, pretty much outside of what I believe that I could accomplish on my own. So for example, I went to the medical CEO of my hospital after I graduated from residency and I said, hey, you need something different from the other hospitals. I think you should build an integrated medical center and I’ll be your medical director. Like this was not even anywhere in the realm of possibility, but I was like, why not?
So I believe first that I could talk about this vision to someone and maybe it would stick, maybe it wouldn’t. And in that belief, you have to hold it in a way that you might have this very clear vision. I had a vision of making a documentary. It happened. I had a vision of writing a book and it happened. I had a vision in Illinois before I moved to Colorado of creating an integrated medical center and it happened. But in all of those visions, in that belief for something that you want or need or feel like is going to help the world or help yourself or help your family or help your health. You have to hold it in a way that you believe strongly in that vision but the how and the timeline, we want to have control of that. The magic happens when we let go and release that to the divine, to this greater force and greater energy.
And the truth is, I also believe that at the core, our intention, now if it’s malicious and evil, which hopefully no one out there is thinking, that’s not going to work out for you very well, or it might work out and then it’ll fall flat on its face. So your intention has to be that love and compassion, because love and compassion is the highest form of energetic. And so when we want to bring in the people that can help us in these projects, the resources, you have to really think, okay, why am I doing this? And granted, we all have a little ego, but the true motive behind whatever you’re doing has to be universal love and compassion and really helping of humanity and service. And if that’s your motive, I can promise you, you’re going to see miracles because that energy will draw the resources and draw the people and help you with the timeline.
So in those examples, I said I had belief in something, and then act. I would go call the CEO and say, can we have a meeting? I went to the publisher and say, hey, I have this idea for the book, a book that no one’s ever done like this before. It’s kind of crazy, but I want to do it this way. The movie, I’m like, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I have this idea that I think we should reach the world. Each of those things, I had the belief, and then I had the action where I did my part. I made the calls. I started seeing about money. I started, you know, doing what I could do, but there was always a component to any miracle that I have experiences that was outside of my potential. Like I knew in my own strength, in my own wisdom, I knew my limitations and I knew what my limitations were.
Now, whether you believe in God or not, I happen to have a strong faith. And so for me, it’s going to that higher power and saying, God, this is what I can do. This is what I can bring. And I know my intentions are good. Will you bless this? Will you bring the right people? Will you show? And again, whatever area of aspect of life, this doesn’t have to be spiritual or religious, but there’s a piece of the universe conspiring with you. And that is where the magic happens because everything great that I’ve ever seen in my life towards the end of seeing that come to fruition, I look back with tears in my eyes and say, I don’t know how that happened. All I know is that it’s going to impact the world. And I am so blessed to be part of this. Like I am so grateful.
And it’s also that gratitude in the process that it’s happening. You’re just like, there would be times like, I’ll take a perfect example. This movie, I had this vision. And within a few weeks, we had a producer and a director and executive assistant. And they were like, okay, this is great. Let’s do this. And I’m like, okay, guys, how much money do we need? I’m like, almost a million dollars. I’m like, cool. Okay. But once again, that’s believe, act. We did what we could. And I’m like, okay. And I was the one the whole time was like, if this is supposed to happen, we’re going to get the money. I don’t know how, I don’t know where, but I just know if this is meant to be, this will come and it’ll surprise us all.
And not two months later, I’m on the phone call, a zoom call with an investor who wanted to buy my clinic, which I wasn’t ended up not selling my clinic, but I’m on the phone and he’s telling about his background and all the work that he’s done in incredible philanthropist. And I find out he’s a billionaire. And I thought, oh my gosh, a million dollars in a billionaire’s pocket is not a whole lot of money. And I pitched to him. I said, this is our heart for this thing. And within two weeks, he flew out and he said, Jill, I’d like to talk to you about the movie. I’d like to be your sole investor if you’ll have me. And we love him to this day. He was such a blessing. That came out of not me doing anything other than having that intention and knowing that somehow, some way it would happen. And I’m on this phone call. And then I had to act. I had to take advantage of, as I see this, I literally, my heart stopped. I’m like, oh, this is my opportunity. And I told him about it. And I told him with not like having any expectation. I just literally shared my vision and my passion for helping humanity. And he saw that and he joined us and we are so grateful. And then in the end of that, that gratitude, that just brings it all around because I know that most of the things I’ve accomplished have been outside of my capability. And because of that, I have the deepest gratitude that I get to experience miracles in everyday life.
Katie: I love that. That is such an incredible story. And I feel like so many just beautiful pieces of wisdom that can be pulled out of that. I especially loved the idea of holding the vision, but not being attached to the details of how. I know I personally could see times where I got stuck in the details or really, really wanted something to go an exact certain way.
We also talked in our, so you mentioned staying in a state of love and compassion, which I love. And we also talked in our first episode, you mentioned how hate is not the opposite of love, but fear is. And I know that for many people, it can be very easy to fall into the fear or to feel fear or to just even feel like something won’t happen or it’s not going to work. We talked about that a little bit in our first episode too. Do you have, it sounds like maybe you’ve always had kind of a natural tendency to be in a state of love and compassion and you have such a huge heart for helping the world. Do you have any tips for people on cultivating more love and compassion and learning to be in that state more often?
Dr. Jill: Oh, such good questions, because I think it starts with some of the stuff we talked in the first episode as well. I really believe that we cannot have love and compassion to the depth of the places we need to experience miracles unless we start with ourselves. So if we have parts of ourselves, so, so often when we’re young, like, like I said, I was a highly sensitive girl and I thought I was too emotional and too sensitive and not tough enough. And so there was parts of myself that I kind of relegated to bad or not good enough or not enough or too loud or too sensitive or whatever, right? We can all think of those things.
And when we relegate pieces and parts of ourselves, we fragment ourselves into a billion pieces and we have pieces that we hate or we hate our stomach or our arms or we have parts of our body we don’t like. And when we do that we are actually hating part of ourself. And I remember reading Gabor Mate’s work on autoimmunity. And metaphorically, he talks about autoimmune as attack of self. And I believe that many autoimmune disease on a metaphorical level, there’s a piece of us that is hating or loathing or not accepting every part of ourselves. And we all have good parts and we all have bad parts. But if we can’t really do that work to have love and compassion for all of the parts of ourselves, even the parts that we think are less lovable or less worthy, we can’t really extend that to the world. So it starts at a home job, right, with ourselves. And it’s a constant work. I’m still a work in progress. Starts there.
And then the other thing you alluded to is faith. And again, this doesn’t have to be religious. I always think of faith, for me it is, but I always think of faith as like the ability to be comfortable with the inevitable uncertainty of life, which pulls us right back to that timeline stuff that we have. Because so often we want certainty. Some of our six core needs are both certainty and uncertainty. So we need novelty, but we also need certainty, like safety and a roof over our heads and stuff. So it’s like this weird thing, like we want newness and unexplained experiences and fun things that are new and novel, but we also want certainty. And if our need for certainty starts to outweigh that, then it becomes in the way of manifesting miracles. And the faith is just a way to actually harness that releasing, that surrender of the need for certainty and to be really comfortable with uncertainty.
Doctors like me come against this in medical school right from the beginning because we want this certainty black and white scientific answer. And many people think that they can get that through science, but the truth is there is never 100% certainty in anything that we do. And so we grapple as physicians in training, how do we deal with this uncertainty? Some people do they become more obsessive with how they do their life, how they wake up their regimen. Some people do. And we all have ways of dealing with that. And there’s nothing wrong with any of those ways. But if we can’t really, really embrace the fact that life is inherently uncertain, and an insurance policy is a great example that gives us certainty that if something happens, but even that, right, doesn’t always cover everything. And that’s a perfect human example of how we deal with uncertainty. Nothing wrong with that.
But this whole faith idea and this idea of manifesting miracles, you have to really, really embrace uncertainty and get okay and get used to being uncomfortable. And when you become more okay with the uncomfortableness of uncertainty, that’s when you can take risk and you can do things that are outside and you can wait for those things that you can’t control. And again, it sounds like really difficult. It takes practice. It’s baby steps. You might start with the smallest little thing and having faith that that’s going to happen.
And I think one of the things you alluded to was how do you stay full of faith and hope in the midst of the darkness, right? Let’s talk just briefly about that because it’s worth, it’s so relevant. We all have these times with suffering. Suffering is inevitable. And I think it’s when we try to bypass suffering. So nowadays, opioids are the biggest thing addiction-wise out there, right? And part of that comes from our unwillingness to experience pain. We want a buffer. We want something to numb us. And maybe it’s alcohol or drugs or opioids or even sex addiction or gambling or you name it. And it could be good things. Like, guess what? Workaholism. Right here, that’s a thing to numb out. The more I work, the more I don’t have to feel, right? And I’ve had to really deal with that because that’s my addiction is working harder, being so busy that I don’t have to feel.
And we all have something and they’re not all bad. But if we can’t get to that place where we can actually embrace pain and suffering as a teacher, we’re never going to be okay with uncertainty. And what I’ve found in my breast cancer and then Crohn’s disease and so many illnesses and suffering, and I still don’t ever want to suffer. But what I’ve learned is as I’m okay with embracing it, what happens is that’s where the magic, that’s where like the most transformative things in our life that take us to a whole new level of understanding and of being. It always happens in the hard times. I wish it weren’t the case, but it just is. And so we can actually, as we have these experiences and get through them, then the next one that comes, we’re like, we can just remind ourselves, oh, this hurts. This is not fun, whether it’s physical suffering or loss of a loved one or loss of finances. But if we can remember, oh, last time this teacher came, it really, really turned out better for me as a soul. And then look for, in the midst of that suffering, look for the purpose, the meaning, the lessons. It can really shift something and allow us to get through things that we would have never otherwise been able to get through.
Katie: Oh, that’s so good. And it reminds me of the idea of pronoia, which people haven’t heard the term. It’s the opposite of paranoia. So instead of thinking everything’s going to go wrong, it’s actually the idea that everything is conspiring to go exactly right. And it reminds me of a dear friend of mine has the phrase she uses often of everything works out perfectly for me, which doesn’t mean, of course, everything works out the way I think it will. There’s a difference, but it works out exactly perfectly. And it’s been fascinating to see that in her life and the way that is her absolute belief and how it seems to like her life works out in such a beautiful symphony.
And I also think this links to the gratitude piece you mentioned. This has been a lesson I’ve been working on lately and by no means am perfect at, but I’ve found so much beauty in, in that, like you said, I can look back on the hardest things in my life and realize how much beauty came out of them. And even though I wouldn’t have chosen them, I would never trade them either. And realizing that pattern has existed a hundred percent of the time. I’m working on cultivating gratitude in the hard moments, not just because I know they’re going to have positive fruit, but of actually finding gratitude while they’re still hard. And I think it’s a difficult pursuit, but also there’s so much beauty in that when we are open to gratitude. And you mentioned gratitude as well. Do you have any suggestions for cultivating more gratitude in our lives?
Dr. Jill: Oh, so, so good. And you’re so right about it. Like who wants to be thankful for suffering, right? It goes against every grain of our humanity. But this is that thing that like takes us energetically to a different level. And there’s just something so powerful. So cultivating gratitude really takes a, when we open our eyes for the day and we can start with the sun is shining, there’s always something to be thankful for. So you can get used to the habit of waking up and thinking or expressing gratitude immediately for something.
And sometimes if you’re going through a really tough time, I don’t know about you, but I’ve had times where I wake up and I almost forget that bad thing because it’s like, oh, the sun’s shining, the birds are chirping, and they’re like, oh, it’s going to be a hard day. So we find ourself like that low, lesser self comes in and starts to remind us, no, it’s not going to be good. But I once knew a very pessimistic person and that was like everything I would be like, oh, it’s a beautiful day. No, it’s really hot. You know, it’s too humid. And I’d be like, oh, but that can be ourselves, right? So if we can actually reframe by starting and ending our day with gratitude.
And we talked earlier about subconscious. One thing I love to do, I learned this in medical school when I would like write out all of my notes on one sheet of paper and then study it. And then I literally could bring up that sheet of paper during the test, like a photographic memory. And I would do that right before bed. And all my colleagues would stay up with all nighter studying. And I would literally at nine o’clock, I would do that sheet of paper. I would study it and then go right to sleep. And I’d almost fall asleep looking at the paper. And guess what? My subconscious chewed on that all night long. And the next day I felt a calm. I was like, I have it all right here. And I was rested and everybody else was like, you know, they’re like doing their coffee and everything. And I did so much better when I programmed my subconscious.
Try this: before you go to bed tonight, maybe you want to get up at 6 a.m. or 5 a.m. or 3 a.m. or whatever a.m. You want to do. Or maybe you have a plane to catch and you tell yourself, tomorrow I want to wake up at 6.05. And you do this right before bed. And what’s almost magical, except it’s not, your body will often 604, you’ll open your eyes and like, holy cow, it really worked. And it happens. And these are not, I mean, it sounds. crazy It really works. So when you program the subconscious and in framing that with gratitude, because if the last thing you think about before bed, whether you journal or just think in your head or say a prayer or even tell someone you love how grateful you are for them and maybe one thing that you’re thankful for. Your body is able to process that all night and you’re going to wake up in a different state of energy in the morning just by doing that right before bed, right before sleep.
Katie: I love that. And it seems to relate to the first part of this conversation and explaining of sort of like being in that state of belief and openness to miracles. I feel like it’s so much easier, whereas if we’re in that state of sort of like judgment or fear or feeling like something’s not going to happen, it probably won’t because that’s already what we’ve judged is going to be the case. Whereas if we can learn and cultivate that skill of being in that place of belief and magic, it makes it so much more likely that those things can enter our lives.
Dr. Jill: So true. Because it really is. I just more and more. What’s funny is I’m an analytical bioengineer. I’m a science person. But as I’ve grown and seen the kind of miracles that can happen, I’m a believer in crazy stuff because I see it. And it’s kind of taken this, and I really feel like there’s such a piece of still being an analytical thinker, but bringing in this intuition. And intuition happens over time with experience where we see patterns that we may not have expressed before.
And I just heard someone who’s in the quantum world talk about love and compassion. When we’re in that state, some of the best thinkers like Albert Einstein made his greatest discoveries in some of those places of gratitude, love, because the energetic frequency of that would allow for the body to just come up with spontaneous answers. It’s almost like the new AI stuff is so quick and so instantaneous. And compared to the old analog where we typed in the programming, it’s a very different way of manifesting. And even our ideas in our brain can work at a different level. I know in the clinic when I am in touch with that patient and totally present with them, maybe even in a flow state with them with total and conditional love and acceptance and creating a safe space. So often as they’re telling their story, I’ll have these just ideas and I know where to go. And I can’t logically explain to you how I got the answer or the solution or the diagnosis. But I know in those states of gratitude and love, solutions that wouldn’t have occurred to us before will come and they’ll be way easier. It’s almost like again, that old computer versus a brand-new supercomputer. It works better, easier, faster in that state.
Katie: I love this about you too, is that you have so much background in the analytical science side and so much knowledge and that you are uniting that with the intuitive side, which I think is a superpower combination. And I also, one of the people I know who is a dear friend, but also highly skeptical, especially of anything in functional or natural medicine, extremely thinks you are so credible and values your expertise so much. And I think it’s because you’ve united those things and it’s an absolute gift to the world. And I think the more that any of us can learn to cultivate love and compassion and gratitude and create that in the world more, that’s the kind of positive ripples that help, of course, on the physical health level, but even more so relationally and in our emotional and mental health and in so many aspects of life. I also know that for me, 10 years ago, that would have been a completely far out concept and hard to understand. Are there any resources you would recommend to people who maybe are like, oh, this sounds like there could be something about it that’s true, but I’m having a really hard time understanding it or accepting it?
Dr. Jill: Great question. Right now I’m reading Power Versus Force by Hawkins. It’s a little out there, but it’s one of those texts that’s like really scientific based of quantum principles. Of course, anything by Eckhart Tolle or, and again, some of these thinkers that are very outside the realm of what I, like you, I would have been like, wait, that’s crazy. But as I’ve experienced it, I’ve been much more open. Let’s see. Oh gosh, I’m just blanking on some of the other ones. If you look at quantum world, and that’s kind of a term you could use that really brings the science of things that are more unexplainable in, and that might be a great place to, Joe Dispenza, that’s another great one who does have a lot of research.
Katie: I will put some of those resources in the show notes as well. And speaking of resources, I want to make sure we reserve a little bit of time to talk about the documentary that you mentioned a little bit already was a miracle project that worked out exactly perfectly for you. But I know you also have so many resources available to people that you work with patients and that also you have created books and online resources and so much more. So where can people find and connect with all of the various beautiful gifts you brought to the world?
Dr. Jill: Yeah, thank you, Katie. My website is Jill Carnahan, J-I-L-L-C-A-R-N-A-H-A-N.com. And that’s the place where you can find all of the podcast, 12 plus years of blog articles, resources. You can link to the movie there. The book is Unexpected: Finding Resilience Through Functional Medicine, Science, and Faith. And it’s so interesting you mentioned that left brain, right brain, because that’s kind of how the book is. It’s like this science and faith to me is like left brain, right brain. And it’s like the analytical versus the intuitive, all these different parts of ourselves. And what happens is we can be very powerful in either or, but when we combine them, that’s when the real magic happens. And I love thinking about it that way.
And especially in my field of medicine, because for so many years, it’s been all analytical left-brain science and very masculine dominated. And I think as more and more women are physicians and bringing some of the feminine energy in and even the faith and the intuition, I think there’s such a power for the future of healing and the future of medicine when we start to realize that there is validity in intuition, there’s validity in pattern recognition, there’s validity in quantum physics and some of these things that we’ve touched on and just as much or more to find answers and solutions in science and in medicine.
Katie: I love that. That’s so beautifully said. And I think you’re right. It’s not an either or. It often feels like a dichotomy when really it seems like it’s incredibly beautiful both and. And I love that there are voices like you who are bringing that to the world. And I know so many who look to you as a model for that as well. So, so much truly a pleasure to get to have this conversation with you, to spend time with you. Like I said, I’m a huge fan of your work and I will link to some of the resources that have helped me that you’ve created in the show notes, as well as the others that you mentioned. But Dr. Jill, thank you so much dearly for your time today. This has been absolutely wonderful.
Dr. Jill: Thank you, Katie. And thank you for being a leader in the world in clean products and just bringing light and information in the work that you do. I feel the same. I want to just publicly say I’m a huge fan and I’m so grateful for all the work you’ve done in bringing this kind of information to the world.
Katie: Well, thank you so much. And thanks to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, your energy, and your attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the Wellness Mama podcast.
If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.
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