Breaking Free from a Broken Healthcare System for Holistic Health

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Boots Knighton [: 00:00:01

Hello, and welcome to another amazing, astounding, super important episode of The Heart Chamber podcast. I am your host, Boots Knighton. Of course, I feel like every episode I bring to you is important because our hearts and our health is important. And I'm always curating guests who are thinking outside the norms and outside of the box of health care in the United States and abroad depending on which countries you are listening from. Amy Stein is a wealth of knowledge when thinking outside the box for chronic illness. And what I am finding in my heart journey and other heart patients that I speak with on almost a daily basis, none of us have the privilege of just having a heart issue. There always will be something else that goes along with it. And for me, I'll be sharing this more and more. After my heart surgery, I was exposed to mold, and it has kicked off a cascade of cardiac symptoms. So, I brought Amy Stein on to have a conversation about that along with the natural heart doctor, Doctor Jack Wolfson, who I interviewed back in December and I'll be bringing you a lot more conversations regarding mold and other biotoxin illness. But for today's episode, I bring you Amy Stein. And before I do that, be sure that you are following me on Instagram. I have 2 accounts, Boots.Knighton, as well as theheartchamberpodcast.com is where I have my website. Oh, and my other Instagram is The Heart Chamber Podcast. And then I just so appreciate your support. Send me an email, boots@theheartchamberpodcast.com. What do you want to hear more of? What you want to hear less of, I want to hear from you. So, without further delay, I bring you my conversation with Amy Stein.

Boots Knighton [: 00:02:14

Welcome to The Heart Chamber. Hope, inspiration, and healing, conversations on open heart surgery. I am your host, Boots Knighton. If you are a heart patient, a caregiver, a health care provider, a healer, or just looking for open hearted living, this podcast is for you. To make sure you are in rhythm with The Heart Chamber, be sure to subscribe or follow wherever you are listening to this episode. While you're listening today, think of someone who may appreciate this information. The number one-way people learn about a podcast is through a friend. Don't you want to be the reason someone you know gained this heart felt information? And if you haven't already, follow me on Instagram, 2 different places, at Booth.Knighton or at The Heart Chamber Podcast. You can also find me on LinkedIn as well as Facebook. But enough with the directions. Without further delay, let's get to this week's episode.

Boots Knighton [: 00:03:27

Thank you, Amy Stein, for joining us today. I just want to tell all of you listeners how wonderful Amy is. She works with women who carry the highly sensitive trait and assist them with reconnecting to their bodies' innate intelligence using mother nature as a guide. She finds that when we awaken to our inner light and wisdom, we can sync the mind with the body and spirit. Amy combines the power of the plants along with energy medicine techniques and breathwork to allow women to live in harmony in their bodies and environments, reminding them that they get to choose what is best for their life. Amy does this by teaching how to reawaken to our intuition as true healing only occurs when we address the whole package. Her approach uses the power of the plants, mindfulness, and breath to assist you in transforming into whom you are meant to be.

Boots Knighton [: 00:04:32

Her coaching calls are called Mind Body Spirit Breath Sessions. So, Amy, thank you so much for saying yes. When I first learned about you and read your bio, I immediately contacted you, and I was like, I have found a soul sister. We have just walked a similar journey. And I truly believe that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I totally believe in that cliche. You know, cliches exist for a reason. And I just knew immediately I needed to bring you on because as I've been telling my listeners, my health has still been up and down, and I ended up learning that I had been exposed to mold just 9 weeks after my open-heart surgery.

Boots Knighton [: 00:05:28

And so, when I discovered you and found out you've been walking a similar path, I just knew we needed to connect, and I needed to bring you on to the podcast because surely, I'm not the only heart patient who has been exposed to mold after heart surgery and then continues to have cardiac symptoms that people can't explain.

Amy Stein [: 00:05:50

Yeah. I mean, it's pervasive right now, all these chronic conditions. Right? And so, we don't realize that all these invisible toxins that we're exposed to create problems with the healing, but also with maintaining wellness. And even if you think like, oh, I'm relatively healthy, your body is suffering from all these things that we can't see.

Boots Knighton [: 00:06:11

Right. And what is really frustrating for me is last summer, so summer of 2022, that was a year and some change after my heart surgery. And I was having all these cardiac symptoms, and my local cardiologist had just reached her max of what she could do for me. And she sent me to the Mayo Clinic, and they did a full workup. And, I mean, we learned some new things about my heart I didn't know before, but even they were like, you need, this isn't your heart. You just need to choose joy. I literally left the Mayo Clinic with a prescription of joy, and that was it. And I wasn't feeling better.

Boots Knighton [: 00:06:58

They were like, we don't know what it is. And, yeah, it was just like, okay. You just need to work on feeling joy, which was true. I'd had a beat down, but, like, really, I can't breathe, and I had chest pain. I had all these things going on, and they're like, we can't help you. Just go feel joy instead. And so, it took me getting COVID in 2023, in January of 2023, and then symptoms even getting worse. And then a local nutritionist did a blood panel on me for inflammation, and that's what started me down the route of eventually getting the biotoxin illness diagnosis. And that doctor that I ended up in front of was like, yep. I get so many people who, they go to Mayo first, Mayo misses it, and then they come to me. And I'm like, great. So, now I'm paying off a $20 out of pocket workup when, you know, it was just mold.

Amy Stein [: 00:08:00

It makes me sad to hear stories like yours and mine because it shouldn't have to come to this. Right? So, like, I went up at Johns Hopkins, which is similar to the Mayo Clinic, and I saw, you know, 5 different doctors there, and none of them agreed. And again, it was kind of like, oh, well, this person said this and this person said that. It makes me really angry because the system is broken and it doesn't look at the body as a whole, and it misses all of these aspects. Right? Like so doctors are not taught about toxins. Doctors are not taught about nutrition, not a lot of things that actually affect the human body. And because Western medicine doesn't understand how the human body works, so many things are missed.

Amy Stein [: 00:08:40

And I found this myself on my own journey just like you in that you have to be open to trying something different. And that can be really scary because in our society, we view different as being bad. Right? Like you oh, you want to fit in. You want to do what everybody else is doing. You want to be “normal”. And when I work with other women who are highly sensitive like myself, and if people don't know who are listening what that is, it's 20% of the population are highly sensitive individuals, so we feel on a deeper level. We have more empathy, more compassion, but we also are affected and overwhelmed by typically what someone else would “a normal situation” because our system is hypervigilant. Our system is always examining for the threat.

Amy Stein [: 00:09:21

And it's in this hypervigilant state from the get go, from when you're born, like, it's just a trait that you are born with. That you carry. And so, you are affected more so by these invisible toxins, these invisible illnesses that Western medicine misses. Right? So, like, for me, it was a merry-go-round of over 3 years. I live in New York, so we went to Manhattan. We saw the top specialists, and they couldn't figure it out. And then we finally made to Johns Hopkins, you know? And it's really hard to get into those places because you have to be really, really sick. You know? You have your briefcase of lab work. I had a whole suitcase of it. And no one agrees because nobody talks to each other because they treat the body as a part system. Right? So, like, you go to the neurologist, you go to the rheumatologist, you go to the GI doctor, you go whoever else you need to see, right, the kidney doctor, the cardiologist, all they have in their pocket is pills, protocols, and I say pictures, so images, radiation. Right? But, again, radiation is another invisible toxin. And so, if your body is already suffering from molds, from EMF, from virus, bacteria, right, anything that's going on that isn't to the naked eye you can't see, you're just putting fuel on the fire. So, rather than having this small fire that you put out, it becomes a huge bonfire, huge blaze that then you have every symptom, and then no one knows what to do with you, so they shuffle you around because, again, the doctors don't want to believe that they don't know something, so they won't admit that. They'll just keep passing you along. Right? Or they'll give you a prescription for joy.

Amy Stein [: 00:10:55

Like, I'm sorry, but that's crap. Because when you're suffering and you're having all these health issues, joy is the last thing you're going to be thinking about because you're in survival and your body is in survival, and so you're just trying to get through the day. You're trying to get through the hours. I mean, the other thing I want to bring to mind for people is that healing is a journey. Right? Like, we're taught that in our society, everything needs to be fast, quick, convenient, instant gratification happening now or yesterday, right? Like, Amazon will deliver your package tomorrow. That's not the way it's supposed to be. Like, and that is not the way that actually the body is designed to work. And so, the body is always working on bringing us back into a balanced state, but because Western medicine doesn't understand how the body works and we're not taught how the body works, we treat it like a broken part, and we farm it out to different doctors.

Amy Stein [: 00:11:48

And, again, they have pills and protocols that are for everybody. It's not a unique approach. And a lot of people who display a lot of these symptoms from these invisible “illnesses”, are the 20% of the population who is highly sensitive, who is going to pick up things in the environment that other people aren't. They're more sensitive to stimuli, external and internal. Right? So, they know when something is off in their body. But because they present as “normal” or healthy or they appear normal or healthy, they're not taken seriously, and so they fall between the cracks of Western medicine. And I think living it myself, it still makes me really angry. And when I hear stories like this, it really kind of still makes me really angry, and I want people to know that it doesn't need to be like this. There is another way.

Boots Knighton [: 00:12:40

And that's why I brought you on. That's why I have this podcast is to shift the conversation around what health should look like. I don't like to use the should word often, so maybe we could even work on a reframe of that. But here, I'll reframe it. It's time for us to upgrade. The health care system is time for us to upgrade how we view each of our individual healing journeys. And I love that you just said that. Healing is a journey.

Boots Knighton [: 00:13:13

And, yes, we have got to get away from the Amazon way of life, the Amazon package way of life. Right? Like, that is only driving our nervous systems to expect and want quick, instant gratification. And none of that, it just shouldn't be. We just shouldn't get our package the moment we think about it. And we certainly need to work on allowing the next right steps to be presented to us in a supportive fashion to our nervous systems to get us to the healing that we all have the right to experience. And it is a right. It is a fundamental right that we should all have access to good quality health care.

Amy Stein [: 00:14:03

Yeah. And the issue is in our society, it's a sick care system. It's not a health care system. Right? It's based upon you being sick and perpetuating this sickness. Right? So, when you're first diagnosed, if you are diagnosed, it's come back when you get worse. Not here are solutions to help you get better. It's take this pill and come back when it gets worse. Come back when you have more symptoms and side effects from the pill, they're giving you to adjust the first symptoms and side effects.

Amy Stein [: 00:14:28

And the thing is, a lot of times there's a lot of emphasis put on the nervous system. Right? But it's actually all the systems because our body is a whole and it works and it's all connected. So, everything works together. But when the nervous system is dysregulated, which is what happens when we are dealing with chronic disease and chronic illness, chronic pain, and we're living in a constant, convenient, fast. We want everything now. We're triggered all of the time. We're living in this fight, flight, freeze, 24/7, which is not how the body is designed to work. So, then you're flooded with all these chemicals that in very small doses, short term doses are okay to the body.

Amy Stein [: 00:15:06

The body can handle it. But when you're living that way 24/7, which is how we live in our modern-day society, the body's going to break down, and it's going to break down quickly. And so, this idea of, as you get older and you age, things are going to start falling apart, that's actually a misnomer. Right? Like, the body is designed to live longer than 100 years in good health, and Doctor Mark Hyman talks about this in his latest book, Young Forever. And so, these ideas that we're raised with, right, that culturally and society tells us that this is the way it's supposed to be is actually not the way it is, but that's what we've been told. And so, Bruce Lipton talks about this. You know, going back to the 1970s, like, this is not radically new information in that it's biology of belief.

Amy Stein [: 00:15:53

So, your biology, your physical body and, again, I say more than your physical body because we are more than a physical body, is reflected and affected by your thoughts, by what you believe, by the system that you're raised in. And because the body is energetic and electric, first and foremost, we have components of physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional. But first and foremost, it is energetic and electric. And so, this is why we are affected by things we cannot see because everything is energy. And a lot of things that we cannot see that are also energy have an electrical component. So, if we are in fact energy and we are electric, we are going to be affected by these things that are electric and energetic even if they are not visible to the naked eye. And because in our society, we're taught, oh, just because you can't see it, it's not real. It doesn't exist. That's not true.

Amy Stein [: 00:16:51

And I speak to this point. And I'm not just making this up because if you go back to ancient healing practices of 2000 years ago, Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, indigenous medicine, I Ching, they discussed all of this more than 2000 years ago and where our current sick care model is 150 years old, and it's based upon money. It's based upon big pharma. It's based upon you're sick, and we're going to keep you sick because it keeps you disempowered. It keeps you having to look outside of yourself for the answers. It keeps you from trusting your gut. It keeps you from honoring your intuition, honoring your instincts. Right? So, you and I both felt like something was wrong, but we were not heard. We were not seen. We were not believed. We were not taken seriously. And it escalates to the point where your body shuts down, and then the doctors start to pay attention. And then they go, oh, now we really don't know because now your body's completely shut down. You have to have open heart surgery. You have to have back surgery.

Amy Stein [: 00:17:57

You're going to be in a wheelchair. We have to give you more radioactive tests to figure it out, and it snowballs into this situation that shouldn't have been there in the first place because I argue that a lot of the conditions that we face now are due to the way that we live, not because we are exposed to so many more different diseases. It's because we're exposed to more toxins. It's because we are exposed to a lifestyle that is not sustainable. It is because we are exposed to all these different circumstances that our body was not designed to deal with on a large-scale constantly 24/7. And so, when you put all of this together, of course, you're going to have an epidemic of chronic illness. Of course, you're going to have an epidemic of chronic pain and mental illness, but we don't think like that because we're not taught to question the system. Right?

Boots Knighton [: 00:18:50

Correct. And that was, like, such sage wisdom just dropped there in the last, well, since we started, actually. But I have talked to so many female heart patients in particular who are told they just have anxiety, that, you know, they just need to see a therapist. I mean, that's what I was told at the start of my heart journey. And then I was told when I kept bringing things up with my cardiologist as recent as the spring, before we've really figured out it was biotoxin illness, she said, you likely just have long COVID. There's nothing you can do for yourself. You just need to go home and rest and wait it out. And my intuition immediately was yelling, no. She is wrong. And I just kept pounding the pavement for answers. And it's exhausting being a woman in the United States who has to interact with the sick care system, as you call it. I love that. It is, I mean; I don't love it. You know what I'm saying.

Amy Stein [: 00:19:57

I know what you mean.

Boots Knighton [: 00:19:58

That's accurate, but it's like, it is absolutely enraging. Yes. And, like, I just interviewed a male yesterday, a male heart patient. And to hear the difference in his actual health care for his heart versus in the United States, you know, Annie's a man, and it's just like, dude, this just should not be. And I'm just enraged. Well, we could talk about this one part all freaking day, but I want to hone in. There were 3 things that we really wanted to share with of listeners today or that you really wanted to share. And I was like, yes, please. And the first part was vibration. And you had a beautiful way of talking about it, and I may have already messed it up. So, you were kind of already starting to get to that, how we're made of energy. And, yeah, tell us more.

Amy Stein [: 00:20:53

Yeah. So, I'm very new at this understanding because, again, like you, I struggled with finding the answers, right? And so, it took a lot of discovering and trying new things. And I want to preface this that everyone is unique, and the discoveries that everybody needs to make can be different, and that's okay. Right? So, our healing journeys can look completely different, and that's okay. And they should actually look different because we are different people. And so, when we are stuck in this idea that everything needs look the same for everybody, it needs to be a standardized approach that's actually not correct. And so, for me, I started playing with energy medicine, which is a mind, body, spirit approach. Right?

Amy Stein [: 00:21:33

So, we incorporate all parts of the body into it. It looks at the body as a whole, but it actually adjusts this idea that even though we can't see it, it's still real. And we can't change or destroy energy, right? Albert Einstein talked about this years ago. But you can actually direct it. You can change how it is corresponding through your body. So, when we have a lot of stuck energy in the body is typically because we've had trauma. It's typically because we've had some sort of traumatic event that occurred. And, again, trauma is not the event. It's the response to the stressor. Okay? And even if you've had an idyllic great childhood, everybody has had trauma because it's not a logical thing. It's your body actually deciphering what it feels is traumatic. There is no logical thought process. There is no, oh, this happened to me. That was traumatic, and this happened and it wasn't. It's what the body deems traumatic, and you have no control over that.

Amy Stein [: 00:22:30

So, I just want people to understand that. So, even if you had this great, you know, happy childhood, you could have still had trauma. And so, when we don't talk about how experiences are affecting us, when we don't feel our feelings, when we don't feel our sensations, we create stuck energy in the body. And so, it's kind of like water. Water always wants to flow. Right? So, if you dam up the water, you're going to have a lot of force, and it's not going to be able to flow where it needs to go. And so, in the interim, it might actually be helpful, but in the long term, it's actually going to create more of a problem. Right?

Amy Stein [: 00:23:01

So, when we don't deal with what comes up in the moment and we push it down, we stifle it, we ignore, and we dissociate from it, we numb out, whatever that you choose, pick your poison. We actually create more stuck energy in the body, which creates blockages, which leads to illness and disease because the body cannot operate the way that it was designed to. But because we don't talk about this and in our society, we only focus on the mind, right, the mind is the end all, be all, but the mind is simply part of the body. And when we don't allow the body who dictates actually to the mind, when the we don't allow the body to express properly, we actually create more illness in the body. And so, if we're energy, just like everything else is energy, we are not matter, we're energy that's spinning so fast that we can't decipher it, we can actually affect the energy into a positive healing state. So, the first thing I started with was Donna Eden. I did her daily energy routine. It's 10 minutes. Right? And so, you do that every day. And then I began reading more books about Cindy Dale is a great energy medicine practitioner. I read a lot of her books. And it was just going back again to these Asian healing systems that talked about vibrational medicine and that sound healing. Right? So, you can be your own best sound healer. You just need to hum. You can express yourself. You can vibrate. And that creates an energetic frequency that is positive and healing to your body because these lower frequencies, these invisible toxins of mold, parasites, EMF are a lower energetic vibration.

Amy Stein [: 00:24:33

So, if you are operating on a lower vibration frequency, you're going to have to deal with more of these issues. But if you actually are increasing your energetic vibration frequency into a higher healing state, you will not be as affected by these low energetic vibes. And so, this is what I've been working on doing in my own life for the last 5 years. Is it perfect? No, because I'm a human being. Right? But it's a practice and we come back to it. And so, it's this idea of taking what we know and what we learn, continuing to expand upon it. Right? Like, I'm always learning. I'm always studying something different.

Amy Stein [: 00:25:10

I'm always reading 5 different books at a time because I'm always having to tweak my own healing because it changes, because we're not stagnant beings. Right? So, like, when we started this conversation 25 minutes ago, my body was in a different energy field than where it is now. And that's the way that it is because I'm in a different place on the earth. The earth is constantly spinning. Right? We're not in a stagnant environment. So, when we treat our body that way, we actually cause more issues inside the body. We create more trauma pathways. We create more energy blockages.

Amy Stein [: 00:25:44

We create, again, which then just increases your pain, increases your disease formation. So, when we can work with the body rather than against it, which is getting out of the mind and back into the physical body, we can allow the vibrational frequency of our body to increase. You can listen to Hertz frequencies. Right? You can get them on Spotify, YouTube, whatever, you know, you choose your platform, and it's free. And you can play that throughout the day as background music. I do that a lot of the time. Binaural beats, same thing. It's that, you know, you're stimulating both sides of the body and you're allowing the body to understand in this time and space, it is safe.

Amy Stein [: 00:26:23

And that's important because if you are not feeling safe and you're not in the physical body, you cannot heal. Right? So that was like a huge discovery that I didn't realize, well, probably like 4 years ago. And so, the more I did the studying about trauma, the more I did the studying about energy medicine, the more I started trying these things for myself, I found that when I vocalize, I felt a lot better. You know? A lot of times if I yell, I feel a lot better because I'm getting it out. And so, the thing is when we choose to not express ourselves, when we choose to continue to do what we're told to do, it actually causes more disease formation. It causes more chronic pain. And it's like this catch 22 of I'm doing the thing, but it's not working.

Amy Stein [: 00:27:07

So, I'm going to do more of the thing. Right? Because we think if we keep doing it, it's going to get better. Oh, I'll just keep doing more of it. And that's actually not the case. You actually want to go at a slower pace because you'll overwhelm the body. And if you're already in a dysregulated state, that's the last thing you want to do.

Boots Knighton [: 00:27:25

Right. And I want to speak to 2 different things you just talked about there that I have been sharing with listeners since the beginning. So, if you're new to The Heart Chamber Podcast, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. And if you want to hear my story, go back to episodes 1 and 2. It's worth listening to, both of them. And I talk a lot about my therapist in episodes 1 and 2, I talk about it again in episode 5 with my physical therapist because she was saying how important it is to have a mental health therapist onboard to help you process the trauma. And I've been working with my therapist now as of this recording for nine and a half years very intensely.

Boots Knighton [: 00:28:18

We're starting to back off a little now because I'm doing great, but I've noticed that there is such power in talking it out. And so, to speak to what Amy was just sharing, like, yes, that is one way of moving the energy. And then another thing, another tool that I still use, I interviewed my acupuncturist, Erin Borbet. It looks like Borbet in the spelling, but it's pronounced Borbet. And I interviewed her in season 1. I'm forgetting which episode at the moment, but I still go to her almost weekly. I just find that I so connect with Amy on so many levels, and we're both very deeply intuitive, sensitive beings. And I just need that extra support of acupuncture every week where my acupuncturist, Erin, is helps move the energy.

Boots Knighton [: 00:29:08

And I truly believe that my therapist and my acupuncturist have been the 2 most helpful people to help me heal from my heart surgery and then the 2 other surgeries I had to have. And they continue to keep me grounded as I walk through this mold and heavy metal journey that I'm on. You know, mental health, it's getting to a place where there's less stigma than there used to be. I say this, I feel like, almost every episode. I feel like everyone in the world should have a therapist. Everyone in the world should go to acupuncture, especially now. It just seems like the world is just going through such turmoil, and we have to not only manage our own personal lives, but then be in a world of dysregulation and EMF, which, Amy, I would love for you to speak to very briefly about EMF. And I can't overstate enough that it is okay to ask for help. Plain and simple. So, Amy, can you just spend, like, 2 or 3 minutes on the EMF part before we go to the next part?

Amy Stein [: 00:30:18

Sure. I just wanted to make a quick comment about what you said, because I think it's important. But I think what people need to understand is that, a lot of time when you are chronically ill, you're told it's all in your head. Right? And it's actually not. It's in the physical body. And so, if you have a great therapist who's actually helping you, that's great. But I actually tell people to find somebody who is skilled in parts work. So, either inter family system, EMDRs, sometimes hit or miss.

Amy Stein [: 00:30:45

But because, again, you want to bring the body along. You don't want to just be talking about it because the more we talk about the same thing over and over again, we can actually retraumatize ourself because the body doesn't understand the difference between past, present, and future. So, if I keep telling a story from when I was 5, I'm going to actually create more trauma pathways and blockages in my body because I'm actually resolving the system. But if I'm actually resolving the system because I'm in the physical body and I'm allowing to be processed, then that's great. But I think people need to be aware of that because for many years, I was in therapy as well, but it didn't actually do anything for me, and it actually retraumatized me. And I didn't understand that until I started doing trauma research the last 5 or 6 years. So, I think that I just want to make that one caveat. Like, I completely respect your decision to do that, I think that's great. It's working for you, but there's a lot of people that it's not working for. And so, I want to normalize that so that people don't feel like it's them and there's something wrong with them.

Boots Knighton [: 00:31:39

No. I'm glad you brought that up because that's actually what I do with my therapist. Everything you just said, the EMDR has actually been profoundly helpful for me. And parts, I'm sorry. How did you say it?

Amy Stein [: 00:31:50

Parts work. That it's Interfamily System. So, it's, IFS.

Boots Knighton [: 00:31:54

Yeah. Interfamily System. Yeah. It temporarily left my brain. But, yes, we've been doing a ton of that. And prior to finding this therapist, I did work with another therapist, and it was when I would consider myself religious at the time. I'm not now. And I chose this previous therapist based on, oh, well, she's a Christian therapist. And if that works for you, awesome. But all it did was retraumatize me, and it actually caused more shame. Because for the way she was operating and the where I was in my life, it was more of a shame-based approach, which was just really unfortunate. I was in my 20s. I didn't understand. I didn't know. You know? So, yeah, I'm glad you made that clarification.

Amy Stein [: 00:32:40

And that's why I want people to understand, like, we're not taught these things. Right? So, unfortunately, you have to find out the hard way like you and I did. And so, I'm trying to have people avoid that route if they can because they don't want people to get stuck and mirrored in this process longer than they need to be. Right? So, it's about finding the options that work for you. Again, finding what feels safe to your body. So, if you meet with somebody, they feel safe to your system, great. If they don't, I advise you to keep looking. Right? And that goes in for any relationship, not just a therapist relationship.

Amy Stein [: 00:33:11

That goes for a doctor. That goes for friendship that goes through anything. Right? So, to turn us back to the EMF arena, it's another invisible toxin. Right? It's an artificial frequency. So, again, it's electrical frequencies, which we are made of electrical frequencies because we are electrical beings, and the Earth is electrical frequencies. However, those are natural. They're not artificially created, and they're at a lower threshold. So, you'll hear a lot of people talk about human resonance, right, and these electrical fields that surround the Earth.

Amy Stein [: 00:33:42

So, I'm not going to get into that because it's a little complicated. But the basics you need to know is that EMFs are constantly being bombarded to the planet from 5G, from the satellites. And the EMFs that we are exposed to now have not been tested for safety, and they are not safe. And the data goes back to the 1950s showing that they're not safe. In the 1950s, the exposure was nothing compared to the exposure we have now. And so, a lot of people are like, well, I don't live by a cell phone tower. I don't care where you live because you're probably your biggest risk is inside your house. So, where's your Wi-Fi router? You know, do you have Bluetooth on? Do you have Bluetooth devices on all the time.

Amy Stein [: 00:34:23

Do you have smart appliances? Do you have a smart meter on your home? This is constant 24/7 radiation. It's like you have a cell phone tower inside your house with every single device. You have cordless phones. You have a baby monitor. There's a lot of research that shows that babies who have baby monitors in their room, they become autistic, they stop speaking because the EMF, every time they make a noise, they get zapped. And so, it's really important for your awareness with healing, right, but also awareness in living in this world. I give talks all the time once a month about how to live healthier in an increasingly toxic world. And I teach people all the things to look out for and how to be aware of what you're consuming, of what you're putting in and, on your body, and what you're exposed to because, again, the body is designed to heal, but the body was designed to heal before any of these things were created. Right?

Amy Stein [: 00:35:15

And so, it’s really difficult, especially when you're highly sensitive because you can feel all these frequencies. So, I just had an incident we were talking about where we started that they were doing some line work on our road, and I'm always nervous when they do that because we have shielded our house as best, we can. But again, I have public utilities, I can't control everything. Right? And I got really sick the past 2 weeks. I wasn't sleeping. A lot of my symptoms returned. We also had mold at the same time. So, it was like double invisible toxins, and a lot of these frequencies actually play off each other.

Amy Stein [: 00:35:48

So, EMFs will make mold grow faster. If you have a lot of heavy metals in your body and you have parasites and you're exposed to EMFs, you become an antenna. If you have silver in your mouth, you become an antenna. So, all of these frequencies will be even more damaging to your body, but you also will feel them more if you're highly sensitive. And so, when we're not taught about these things and we feel this way and we don't understand what it is and we begin to doubt ourselves that there's something wrong with us and we don't know why, I'm trying to prevent that from people having to feel that way because I know what it feels like and so do you, and it's not a good feeling. And it actually makes you then continue to believe this crap that you're told because you think there's something wrong with you. So, I want people to understand there's nothing wrong with them. They're not broken.

Amy Stein [: 00:36:39

They just aren't aware of what's going on. They haven't learned what they need to learn yet. Right? So, like, I have this eBook that's our free gift of 7 discoveries I made on my healing journey of over 15 years. Right? Like, I'm still on it. It doesn't end. As long as I'm in the physical body, I will be contending with things. I never say I'm fully healed because I'm not. Because, again, I just got taken out by EMF and mold. Right?

Amy Stein [: 00:37:02

So, it's this constant evolution, and it's also an awareness of, I live in the world, and I can mitigate as much as I possibly can, but I can't control everything. And I need to be okay with that. I need to accept that. Right? So, for a lot of people, I'm not this person. I need to be really rigid. But a lot of people can do that 80/20. Right? So, like, their house is completely shielded, and they can go some places and they're fine that aren't completely shielded. I'm not that person.

Amy Stein [: 00:37:29

I'm not there yet. And we could try out to drive ourselves crazy and ask all the questions of why and why is this happening and all the things, but it actually is just helpful to be curious about what could I possibly do? How can I make this situation a little bit better for myself, you know? What's right about this that I'm not getting? And that's a hard question to ask when we don't feel good, when we're sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, when all the things we did, didn't work. When we've done the pills, the protocols, and the physicians, and we feel like there's something wrong with us, it's really hard to then say, what could be right about the situation? What am I missing? How is this happening for me and not to me? And I'm going to tell you, like, there are days where I'm, like, not doing it. I just can't. Like, I can't do that today. Right? So, I'm going to choose to do what I can, and I'm going to prioritize what I need as far as nutritious food, as far as, you know, giving my body a break as far as helping and working with my body rather than against it. So, the suggestions that we're making are not suggestions that you're always going to be able do. And I'm the first person to say that I can't always do it.

Amy Stein [: 00:38:34

Again, I'm human. I'm infallible. Right? And I have good days and bad days, too. I have more good days than bad days, but, again, the last few weeks were pretty crappy because I was dealing with mold exposure and EMF issues. And so, there's a lot of things that we can't control, but there are a lot of things that we can control. I live my life what people think is kind of rigid, but it's really back to basics. It's really the way that we were intended to live. But it appears rigid because I don't buy into that convenient now lifestyle.

Amy Stein [: 00:39:07

I don't use my phone for social media. I use my phone to make phone calls and to text people. And at that, I'm very limited with it. Right? Everything is hardwired in our house. We don't have Wi-Fi. We don't have Bluetooth. We don't have smart appliances. We don't have any of those devices because it's not healthy, and I feel it if we do. So, I think it's an awareness of, if you're really having a hard time and you've done all the things that Western medicine has told you to do, which again is not a lot of tools in their toolbox. It's about asking, like, what could I do differently? How can I look at this in another way? What could be a different perspective here? And that's hard to do. That takes courage. It's a courageous act, and it's going against what everybody else is doing. But I encourage you to do the courageous act. I encourage you to question the belief systems you're raised in.

Boots Knighton [: 00:40:05

Thank you for that, all of that. And, you know, it's interesting what the media chooses to focus on. You know, we only see the ads for different medications and, you know, always have to ask your doctor. Right? It's just like, oh my gosh. It's like what we're bombarded with. I'm always curious about what I don't see being talked about more than what it is being talked about uncovered. Right? Another thing that I wanted to ask you about is you have 3 steps to finding your inner voice and speaking up when no one around you believes you. And you were already kind of alluding to that. I want to give our listeners some actionable steps that they can take, particularly women who feel like they're yelling into the void when they don't feel well. What are those 3 steps for us?

Amy Stein [: 00:41:00

It's trust your gut, which you and I talked about at length. Right? And so, it's, again, in our society, we're taught not to trust things we can't see, and intuition is something you can't see. But there's a reason that there are these phrases of trust your gut, gut instinct. Right? Go with your gut because they're valid. They're real. And so, when we look to how people live their lives many, many hundreds of years ago, but even up to a hundred years ago, there was a reverence for Mother Earth. There was this idea that the natural rhythms, we lived within those natural rhythms, right? We ate what was in season. We grew our own food.

Amy Stein [: 00:41:41

We knew where our food came from. And we trusted our gut in that if something didn't feel good to us, we didn't do it. We were okay with being different, with standing out a little bit more. Right? And so, now in this society, it's all about conformity. It's all about doing what everybody else does. It's all about, you know, eating the food that's not in season. It's all about eating processed and fake food. And it just destroys the body because it's not recognized as food, as chemicals, it's dyes, it's just bad, you know, the plastic exposure, all those things.

Amy Stein [: 00:42:14

So, it's having that courage to do something different, to trust your gut, to feed that part of you in ways that feel aligned. Right? So, for me, I wasn't raised spiritual. I wasn't raised religious. So that was really hard for me to understand that spiritual aspect of myself. That was like the last part take on. And so, for me, this idea of and this is the book I'm writing right now, is surrender isn't a dirty word because in our society, we're said surrender is bad. Surrender means you're giving up, you're quitting, but it actually doesn't. The connotation can be I'm asking for help.

Amy Stein [: 00:42:53

I'm giving something over rather than giving up. And so, however that looks for you, you know, God, the angels, your inner guidance and your higher self, whoever it is. Like for me, it's Mother Nature. Right? That's who I talk to a lot. And so, I'm always looking and asking, like, what else do I need to see about the situation. Right? Like, it was a reminder for me with the mold and the EMF, like, oh, play more Hertz music. You know, do more breath work. That brings me back into my physical body because if I'm all in my mind, I can't actually heal because I'm out of my physical body.

Amy Stein [: 00:43:31

And so, I did more Qigong, I did more energy medicine. I did it more throughout the day in order to build resilience. And so, for me, it's living aligned with Mother Earth. It's looking at her, for example. So, she's very resilient. We've polluted her and poisoned her and done everything we possibly could to everything to her. Right? And she's still here. She's still resilient.

Amy Stein [: 00:43:55

She still survives because she adapts. And so, it goes to that curiosity aspect of how can you adapt, what can you do differently? Again, and by honoring yourself, not what I'm telling you to do, not what someone else is telling you to do. Again, it's like going within, connecting to the intuition of what feels good to me, right? You go to a meeting, that doesn't feel good. That doctor's not aligned. They're not listening to me. I, you know, I researched this thing. It doesn't feel right, but then someone else tells me about this other thing and I'm, like, you know what? I think I'm going to check that out. Or a lot of times, I'll say the universe will give you the bread crumbs.

Amy Stein [: 00:44:30

So, a lot of my struggles, people were offering suggestions, and it was a lot of things I had done years, and years, and years ago. Right? But there were some out there suggestions at first. And being a medical researcher, I was all about the science, so I'm like, show me proof. Right? But a lot of times, there is proof, but we're not aware of it. Or sometimes you just have to have a faith of, you know what, this feels right to me and I'm going to take that. I'm going to take the courageous step. I'm going to take the leap, and I'm going to try something different. And that was plant medicine for me years ago into my journey was I started to realized that every plant that was out there had a medicinal purpose. And a lot of the plants that we believe are weeds, that were growing in my yard were actually going to help me with a lot of situations I was experiencing.

Amy Stein [: 00:45:15

So, again, it's having this idea of being aware of what's around you, being aware of the message you're receiving, again, as symptoms from the body, but also from the universe. From, you know, again, who you ascribe to, giving you those bread crumbs, pointing you in a different direction. And, yeah, like, you could go down a whole rabbit hole like I did. Right? Or you could just kind of take pieces of it and say, you know, this feels aligned, this doesn't. These feels aligned, this doesn't. Right? And course your own journey. Again, you get to choose what's best for you. It's not me saying and even in my one-on-ones in my group, like, I never tell people this is what I did and this is what you should do. I never say that because I can't because it's so different for everybody.

Amy Stein [: 00:45:59

I can offer suggestions and say these are things I find helpful for everybody. These are things that were helpful for me if you want to explore them more. You know, these are ideas that I found were really helpful in my process of unlearning, in changing everything I thought I knew, right, in growing up in Western medicine and working in Western medicine and then having to do a complete 180. Like, that was really scary to go against everything that I knew, but I was at that point that I knew I had to do something different. I was desperate because I was dying. And so, I don't want people to get to that point where they're desperate because they're dying. I want them to be receptive to the idea. I just tried in a little way, right? Like you don't have to take this big leap.

Amy Stein [: 00:46:44

I don't want you to take a big leap. I want you to take it in small steps. Like, what is the next small step that I can take? What is a small way that I can incorporate this? Okay. So, I ran out of my toxic laundry soap. I'm going to go find a better alternative. That's a small step. You know, I'm going to stop eating from the drive thru. I'm going to start cooking my own meals.

Amy Stein [: 00:47:03

Maybe you do it 3 times a week. That's a small step. Right? And so, again, I'm going to prioritize my sleep because when I sleep is when I heal. So, I'm going to get to bed by 10 o'clock. I'm going to do it 15-minute intervals. Right? Like, it's taking the small steps, and it only you know what those look like, and only you know what's manageable for you. Because I can make suggestions, and you can be like, that's a hell no. I'm not going to be able to do that. So, it's taking that action that feels right for you.

Boots Knighton [: 00:47:32

Yes. What I heard was trust your gut, learn to adapt, and the universe will give you crumbs. And I can't agree more. Like, that's me, like, just synthesizing what you just said, and it's learning to trust your intuition. It's easier than you think. You just have to be willing. Number 1, you have to be willing. Number 2, you have to hone the skill of quieting your mind, and that takes time.

Boots Knighton [: 00:48:05

So, religiously, every morning, I am up by 6. By 6:15, I'm in a specific chair, in a specific room in my house with a specific cat, because I have 3. And, both my dogs lay on my feet. It's like this thing we do. And I listen to a meditation, and then I just free write. And I use sparkle pens to write, because why not? And it's just like this thing I do. And I've done this now for over a year. I cannot believe how it's transformed my life and how it has done nothing but sharpen my connection with my intuition to the point that I know what's wrong usually before, you know, my body lets me know or a doctor or whatever.

Boots Knighton [: 00:48:59

I'm now getting to the point that I catch my ego before it interjects. I will just tell you, it took time, but it is such a valuable 20 minutes in the morning for me, and I can hardly believe what comes onto the page. Like, I just ask my soul what it wants to tell me today and every morning. And it is amazing, the love, the care, the joy, the cheering on that my soul provides for me. And that is how I have learned to trust my gut. That's how I adapt. And then that's how I find those crumbs from the universe. Because the other thing is it's like we either see the evil in the world, the bad news. We're going to find what we're looking for. And so, I choose to look for the magic every day. I choose to look for the serendipity every day. And that's how I have gotten the health care that I have needed because I was open to, as you said, the breadcrumbs. So, my cardiac symptoms continued. I knew something was wrong. I said, okay. Show me the next right steps to the universe.

Boots Knighton [: 00:50:20

That's how I refer to a higher power, and it was presented to me. And for those listening, if you are, like, pooh poohing this or super uncomfortable, I hear you. I get you. Like, it is a next level of being, but anyone who is facing open heart surgery or has had open heart surgery, I have yet to talk to a person who hasn't had a major spiritual shift. And we heart patients, we are more open minded and open hearted, pun totally intended, to the metaphysical. So, yeah, I love that. Amy, before we have to go, if you had, like, one burning piece of advice you wanted to share with heart patients from where you sit, what would it be?

Amy Stein [: 00:51:15

I guess the thing I would say for anybody suffering, whether it's a heart condition or any other chronic disease condition, right, where you feel like you're hopeless, there's nothing to come back to yourself in whatever way that looks like, to connect to that inner wisdom, that innate intelligence that exists there in whatever way feels good, if it's journaling, if it's doing the meditation, if it's connecting with mother Earth. That's how I do it, like I said. But just finding that way to come back to yourself because the answers are within. Right? So, we talked about quieting the internal noise, but quite an external and internal noise, right? But the answers are within if we allow them to percolate, if we allow the time for them to come up. It's really hard for us to sit and do nothing because in our society, we're all about doing. But if you can find a way to just sit, like you were explaining, that process is beautiful. It's a ritual. Right? Like we don't do ritual anymore in our society and we've moved away from that, and it's caused another level of disconnection. So, if you can find a way to incorporate ritual into your everyday life, I think that's something tangible you can hold on to. Right? You don't need to call the practice. You can call it this is my ritual.

Boots Knighton [: 00:52:25

And it's so important for the nervous system. Again, coming back to the nervous system. Amy, I have loved this conversation so much. Thank you so much. I will put in the show notes how people can connect with you. I can't emphasize enough how incredible Amy is and seek her out for, like, up leveling your life or up leveling your health. She's a wealth of wisdom, and we are lucky to have her with us today. And I have a feeling she'll be back for another interview.

Boots Knighton [: 00:53:02

Thank you for sharing a few heartbeats of your day with me today. Please be sure to follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you are listening. Share with a friend who will value what we discussed. Go to either Apple Podcasts and write us a review or mark those stars on Spotify. I read these, and your feedback is so encouraging, and it also helps others find this podcast. Also, please feel free to drop me a note at boots@theheartchamberpodcast.com. I truly want to know how you're doing and if this podcast has been a source of hope, inspiration, and healing for you. Again, I am your host, Boots Knighton, and thanks for listening. Be sure to tune in next Tuesday for another episode of The Heart Chamber.