The Power of Presence and Intuition in Heart Surgery with Dr. Fazzino

We feel it is important to make our podcast transcripts available for accessibility. We use quality artificial intelligence tools to make it possible for us to provide this resource to our audience. We do have human eyes reviewing this, but they will rarely be 100% accurate. We appreciate your patience with the occasional errors you will find in our transcriptions. If you find an error in our transcription, or if you would like to use a quote, or verify what was said, please feel free to reach out to us at connect@37by27.com.

Boots Knighton [: 00:00:01

Have you ever wondered what your body might be trying to whisper to you? Or how the very organs that keep you alive could hold emotional wisdom? Dr. Fazzino takes me and you, the listener on a voyage in this episode. Through the energetic ties that bind us to our physical selves especially the heart. And the crucial role this awareness plays in our healing particularly after surgery.

Boots Knighton [: 00:00:34

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 are 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 heartfelt information? And if you haven't already, follow me on Instagram, 2 different places, at Boots.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 [: 00:01:47

Oh, Dr. Dolores Fazzino, thank you so much for just your generosity and spending time with me and the listeners of The Heart Chamber Podcast today. You are a busy lady, and I just feel so fortunate to have met you and that you are willing to come on and share your gifts with us. So, welcome.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:02:10

Well, thank you, Boots, and I so appreciate the invitation to be here because I love to share my wisdom and information with people because I feel like it's a very timely period in humanity's development and evolution or what we want to call, ascension. And a lot of times, we've just been put through the washing machine. We're on the spin cycle now. So, it's like things are happening rather quickly. And if you don't stay heart centered and grounded in your body, you're going to have some challenges because it is really about every individual just taking that step to ground themselves so they could be fully present in their body. When you're in the present and when you're in your body, when you're in your heart space of all places, you're in your body, okay? There's a lot of things that happen there. You can experience your emotions. And in our evolution, emotions have been given a bad rap. Okay? Where you're told, don't feel. I grew up in a household where we weren't allowed to feel. So, when you are an empath, intuitive, and highly sensitive person like myself born that way and you're told not to feel or ignore it, it'll go away, guess what happens? You ignore something. It gets bigger. So, I would say that to my mother all the time. I'm ignoring it, but it's getting bigger. It's not going away.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:03:34

So, I knew early on that there was something not quite right. So, for me, I channeled my emotion into music because I was able to express my emotion through playing the clarinet, and I really excelled at that. In fact, I was on a pathway to become a concert clarinetist. And as a teenager, prior to being a teenager, my dad had been sick probably about 10 years of my childhood from, like, the time I was in 2nd grade to the time I was a junior or senior in high school. He had back surgery back in the 1960s, 1966, so we're talking about an antiquated form of what we know of as medicine in hospital care in contrast to today. So, he had a surgery, and he picked up a hospital acquired infection, which back in the 1960s is it was almost considered death sentence because they didn't have the technology, the therapy, the treatments, the antibiotics, the meds to treat that. So, he did survive that. He was in the hospital for over 2 months. And when I remember seeing him, he looked like a walking corpse. A man who probably weighed about 170 pounds was home and weighed about 120. And my mom just was trying to keep it together because I was the oldest of 4 kids, and God bless her for that because that was part of, I think, her journey. And he got better and was fine for 4 years, and then the unthinkable happened. Whenever his immune system would get compromised, a whole sequela similar to what had happened to him in the hospital after his back surgery would happen again. And he would throw abscesses throughout his abdominal cavity. He would have to go in the hospital, have major surgery. He would be on his deathbed, and it was, you know, about 2 months of being hospitalized. He would recover, but that just didn't happen once. It happened 4 separate times between 1970 and 1975. So, my childhood was a shit show emotionally because I didn't know if daddy was going to make it. You can't feel. So, guess what? I just channeled my emotions into music, and I really excelled at that. In fact, I was going to go to college to become a musician. But what had happened, the last time my dad had this sequela happen, we're going to go up to 1975 now. And in 1975, the CAT scanner was the first modern piece of medical technology that was introduced. So, they put my dad underneath the CAT scanner, and they found that where the infection was stemming from was where he had the previous surgery back in 1966. Okay. Well, that was good. Now what? So, they decided that what they needed to do was do what they call a spinal fusion, and you have to remember back in 1975, that procedure was in its neophyte stages beginnings of being done. It came with a high risk of you will either be paralyzed, you could die, or maybe you'd get better. My mom was having nothing of that. In fact, she started looking for alternative possibilities. And I crack up when I share this story because this just goes to show you how much we've advanced technologically. Back in 1975, we didn't have the Internet, WebMD, or computers. We had the National Enquirer. This is where a lot of people got their information. I kid you not.

Boots Knighton [: 00:07:19

Really?

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:07:21

Oh, yeah. They would get it from magazines, newspapers. This is how we communicated. We didn't have cell phones. We didn't have any of that stuff. So, my mom came across this article in the National Enquirer, and it was a feature article that was being written by the National Enquirer about this minister from Carroll, Michigan, Alex Reverend Holmes, who was a Presbyterian minister who had the gift of laying out of hands. And why he was being featured is that he had been doing this work for 25 years, and he was very assistive in healing his brother of leukemia. So, he didn't do the work. It was channeled through him, basically, and his brother got healed. So, my mom was all over this like butter on bread. My dad, not so much. He should have been from Missouri, the show me state because he's the biggest skeptic I ever know. So, it just so happened my parents were in the hospital at this time and deciding what the next steps. So, my father said, absolutely not. Not unless the surgeon says it's okay. So, my mom just took that information, went to the nurse's station where doctor surgeon was sitting there, my dad's or a surgeon, and, you know, she shared with him, he was sitting there writing. He looked up at her, and she said, I'm thinking about having a spiritual healer coming in to assist my husband with his condition. Would that be, okay? Surgeon is writing, looks up at her. Does a miss a beat, sure. That would be fine. So, she figured, like, she got the blessing. So, she went back to the room, shared that with my father, and my father said fine. Now my mom went back to the nurse's station. 10 minutes didn't go by. Same doctor surgeon sitting there, and she announced to the surgeon, my husband agreed to have the spiritual healer come. The doctor dropped his pen and said, what are you talking about? I never agreed to that.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:09:14

Okay. So, this is where things are happening. You can't make this stuff up. Things are happening behind the scenes in another dimension to allow this what I'm going to share with you next. A month later of course, my mom didn't tell that piece of information to my dad. A month later, reverend Holmes came to our house in Connecticut. My mom flew him out. My 2 grandmothers were there. My parents and my 2 sisters and brother and myself. And he waited for us to come home from school, and I really love this guy's energy and essence. He was just the most humble and loving presence, and I just felt very safe in his presence. And I just knew there was something about this man that was uber special. And so, somehow, he noticed that my father had one leg that was shorter than the other. Okay? I don't know how he knew this because my dad was sitting down, and my dad was barefoot. And my dad does wear a lift in his shoes, but his shoes were nowhere in sight. So, he asked my father to raise both his legs, and sure enough, you could see the 1-inch gap when he put a book underneath. So, one leg was shorter than the other or longer than the other. And so, then he placed his hand on my dad's solar plexus and went on his crown and started saying some prayers. And then not 3 minutes went by, and he said to my father, Joe, put both your feet up. And they were both the same length. In that moment, my life changed forever.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:10:44

I knew that it was no longer my life's mission to go into music, but to go into health care to bridge the visible with the invisible and the physical with the spiritual. My father wailed like a baby because remember, he needed to have physical evidence that something was happening. He was a skeptic. He needed to know that something was happening. I've never witnessed my father cry like that ever in my lifetime. And more prayers were sent over my father by the minister, and he was instructed to go and sleep and rest. He slept for over 24 hours because, you know, when you have had massive energy work or you're getting a download or something, sometimes you need to process and integrate that into your physicality. So, sleep is sometimes the best way to do that. He went back a month later to the doctors. They did a repeat CAT scan. They found no evidence of the infection. He never had to have the surgery. He never had to revisit that problem in his lifetime, and he passed away about 11 years ago at the age of 80.

Boots Knighton [: 00:11:53

Wow. Did not see the story going in that direction. That is incredible.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:11:59

So, this has been the foundational piece for where I'm going, and, you know, just I call them God moments when the surgeon said one thing and then totally denied it. Those are God moments that are setting things up behind the scenes for this to happen. And I'm sure for me, this was part of my journey as well as to get me on the right path of where I needed to be. So, you know, I am so grateful and appreciative to have even though it was a very challenging experience, I learned so much about not only myself, but about possibilities that in a time in history where this was looked at quackery, there's more going on in, you know, where medicine has the potential of going in the future. We're witnessing a lot more of the integration of the spirituality. Okay? The essence, the energy field, everything is energy. It's not in containers or boxes.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:13:06

Everything's interconnected in ways you have no idea. And I'm blown away every time I get to witness this and see it from the other side because western medicine has been resting on their laurels for a very long time thinking that they're the cat's meow, and they have no clue. And I think Dr. Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra really surmise this, and it's everything that I've kind of known for a while. They were sitting on a panel and both those doctors for the audience that don't know that, they're both western medicine trained physicians that do alternative medicine. And they were saying that western medicine is good at taking care of acute problems. Say, you fall, break your arm, you need a cast, and, you know, so on. Or you need to get your appendix out. Chronic and long-term problems, they're not good at, at all. So, for western medicine trained practitioners to admit that, that's huge.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:14:04

What we have to realize, number 1, we're all human beings. We are always learning and evolving, and to think that we have all the answers, that's very arrogant and very ego driven. Okay? Because we don't. There's always a different possibility. We just haven't tapped into it yet. Right?

Boots Knighton [: 00:14:25

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. What we are actually seeing, the reality that we are perceiving is such a minuscule amount of what is actually around us and happening.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:14:37

I think what we're witnessing to and what I've seen I've been in the health care industry, like I was saying, close to 45 years, and, initially, things would happen. You know, I've been in the clinical setting my whole entire career. I also do coaching. I also, help people get unstuck and look at realigning parts of themselves that are out of balance because it's all about returning to balance. The mental, the emotional, spiritual, physical, dimensional, and ancestral as well. I'm going to add that because it's so key right now. Because some culmination of everything we've experienced in this lifetime and multiple lifetimes and also ancestral lineage stuff that comes through as well. We're in interesting times. We have access to that knowledge now because we're awake and awakening. And so, as we awake and awaken, our vibration goes up. That information is already there for us. It's not like all of a sudden it just appeared. No. It's always been there. It's just in a higher frequency, and now we have access to going into that. And how do we continue to tap into that is stay in your heart space. Okay?

Boots Knighton [: 00:15:57

And we're going to get to the heart space. There's so much I want to unpack with you this morning. Let's just start with, like, your credentials. Okay. So, you were saying you were on this one path to become a professional musician. And now in your bio, it says you've been a part of over 18,500 surgeries.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:16:22

Oh, yes.

Boots Knighton [: 00:16:23

So, take us from that moment you said, you know, that changed your life forever, witnessing your dad go through this incredible healing moment. And now you're on the other side of over 18,000 surgeries. That is phenomenal. Brag about yourself.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:16:40

Well, thank you. It's been a journey, and I've been connected to spirit probably for my entire life because I used to, as a youngster, see things and hear things and know things, and it would, I think, drive my parents crazy because they didn't know what to do with me. I would just call it as I saw it, and it would be right. But, you know, going back into health care and stuff like that, I started out on the hospital floors, and, you know, I just wanted more and more experience. So, I ended up jumping into the intensive care unit where I really learned

Boots Knighton [: 00:17:16

as a nurse.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:17:17

As a nurse. Yep. I started out in 1981 with a bachelor's of science in nursing, and that was kind of unusual at the time because they were usually diploma nurses, 3-year diploma or 2-year college degree. 4 years were just coming on to the forefront when I graduated. And so, played in that hospital arena and, you know, got some education and experience, and I just noticed things like in the ICU, I would know things before they would actually happen. So, it was actually a real gift because it's like I knew that a person was going to start going downhill somewhere in the middle of my shift, so it was just like I would prepare the doctors a little bit. And they're like, well, how did you know that? I said, I know things. What can I tell you? It's just like I could look at something, and it talks to me. So, I ended up transitioning going to surgery because I just remember one day I got so burnt out because being an empath, intuitive, and highly sensitive person, I didn't know about energy and boundaries, and it would just sap the living life out of me being in a clinical setting. I got to the point where I only wanted to take care of comatose patients with no families and work the night shift. I didn't want to talk to anybody. So, I remember driving to work one day and I missed the exit, and I decided, okay. I think it's time for a change. So, I did a lateral transition and went into surgery. So, I've been in the surgical arena probably the last 38 years of my career, and I've been in health care, like, 45 years.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:18:47

So, love surgery, took to it like a duck to water. I was just very interested in how everything worked. And, you know, of course, the patient's asleep, but you have a whole set of other dynamics you deal with. The interpersonal relationships of all the people who are awake in the room. And so, had an opportunity to move from Connecticut where I grew up to California, and this is a funny story too because you just never know how the universe molds you and leads you to where you need to go. I had come out to California in the dead of winter of 1988, and I had just shoveled my car out for the last time, and I said, I'm over this. So, I went to go visit a girlfriend in California, in San Diego no less, and she said, you're going to be here a day and you're going to move. Well, 3 months later, I packed up all my stuff and I was in San Diego.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:19:40

Now the thing you have to understand is that this is another thing that predates computers, Google, and all this other stuff. So, for nurses, we have reciprocity with our licenses. If you get licensed in one state and you pass, you could pretty much get a license in another state. So, but I was told that it was going to take anywhere from 3 to 6 months to get a California license, and I was okay with that. So, I sent all my paperwork in. I had a California license in my hot little hand in 2 weeks. So, I knew I was supposed to go. There was no question. So, I did, and it's been my home. I've been here in San Diego almost 36 years, and this is where I have flourished. Coming here, I really wanted to be an assistant surgeon. So, what that means is that if you're a nurse, you could get specialized training to step in and with the surgeon and do the operation. You're not handing instruments. You're actually doing the surgery. What happened was this. You know how the universe just they keep sending you information. You don't know how you got on their mailing list. Well, I got on this mailing list for this course to do this work, and I'm thinking to myself, alright. So, they're really not doing this here in Southern California because they're ultra conservative, and it's a boy’s club in San Diego. And it was very challenging. So, I got that education, and I pretty much pioneered with the state of California to allow that to happen in Southern California. So, now it's, like, standard of care in the community where mid-level practitioners, like nurse practitioners and like myself, and physician's assistants can step into that role and actually get reimbursed for it as well. So, yeah, so it's been an interesting uphill battle a little bit, just, like, making these little steps. And so, I also knew too that when I assisted in surgery, it was like I've done it before in another time and place. Okay? It was so familiar to me, and I really excelled at that. In fact, I had my own practice for 22 years, and it only started with 2 surgeons and I. By the time I left it, after 22 years, I had a pool of 50 different surgeons in different specialties at 7 hospitals that I was assisting at. It was really busy. And, plus, things were changing on the medical front with reimbursement, and I needed to bow out of that and look at things from a different perspective. And so, now I do still assist, but I also coach. I also help people if they're going through surgery so they could heal faster because I feel that there's more that goes on behind the scenes that people can't see, but some of us are privy to that that are assistive that could help us. Case in being.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:22:36

It's like being the tip of the iceberg is the physical. What's below the surface is the emotional, mental, spiritual, dimensional, and ancestral stuff that's on the unconscious level that's kind of running the show of the physical. This is all we could see. And I noticed that over time when I would work with certain surgeons who were oncology doctors and stuff like that or oncology surgeons, that we would have what I call frequent flyers. They would come in, have a surgery for the cancer, do chemo and radiation. They'd be back in another year and a half, 2 years. And I was like, why? You know, why is having a cancer a recurrence? So, I kind of sat with that for a while, and I said, okay. So, we know that stress is a big thing and everything's energy, and it's all interconnected. And across the board, breast cancer is treated pretty much the same way. But the thing is, you have to remember, we're all individuals. We've all had different experiences. We cope differently. We handle stress differently. We maybe don't experience our emotions or, you know, we stuff them or ignore them, put them on the shelf for later, or we partially experience our emotions. Remember, everything is energy. If it doesn't get experienced, it doesn't come to neutrality, and it has to go someplace. So, it gets locked in our energy field, and the tipping point is usually the endocrine system and the lymphatic system that it comes into the body and starts raising holy hell. I know that's a lot to handle. This is the truth, though. And so, when you're able to assist a person even before they have their surgery, so I like to walk people through, like, meet with them, find out a little bit about their story. Because when a person talks, this is how it works for me. It's like, energetically, I could see how things are kind interconnected together and where maybe the blocks and what needs to be realigned. And I coach them to do that because I don't want to do that for them. They have to do it for themselves.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:24:42

Because for me doing it for them, it's like throwing a Band Aid on them. And, you know, they need to experience, own it, and reintegrate whatever that is into themselves because when we have, just an example, an emotional experience and we didn't cope well with it and we shut that off, it's like we get locked in another time and place when that happened, and it's still running the show. Remember, all of this is unconscious. Okay? So, when you look at it from a shamanic perspective, it's like part of your soul or fragment of your soul is lost in another time and place. It's about calling your pieces back so you could become complete and whole and love it up because our natural tendency is just to say, oh, no. Go away. You know? Separate yourself. It's about reintegrating it and loving it, appreciate it, and bring it back to home, be complete and whole.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:25:43

So, when people start working with that concept before their surgery, I know that their surgery goes better. They're starting to heal actually before they actually have the surgery. So, sometimes their surgery isn't as involved as it has to be. And when you have surgeons that see this and value that, you know, it's like an epiphany and AHA moment. They get it. This one surgeon, a good friend of mine, breast cancer surgeon, she's like, oh my god. They're getting healed before they even have the surgery. I said, bingo.

Boots Knighton [: 00:26:17

You're touching on some really important parts that I have shared in previous episodes. I spent a lot of heart month, the month of February this year, talking again about my journey. And, you know, I've already shared my journey in, like, the first episode when I first launched this podcast. And it's interesting. I recorded that particular episode in January of 2023. And now a whole year has passed, and I am seeing everything in even a deeper, more evolved way, more healed way. And I want to spend a little bit of time on what you just said about preparing for open heart surgery because that's what I did with my therapist. And it was a slightly different nuanced approach, but the same in that I kept saying to her before it was confirmed that I needed surgery, and I had been through so much medical gaslighting and had to really advocate for myself. I said, I don't understand it. I just have this deep intuitive knowing that I need my chest opened up. And I felt like such a crazy person saying that out loud. I mean, who on earth wants to have their chest sliced open? And I couldn't explain it to her, but all I kept seeing was a little mini me, like, little 4-year-old with pigtails who was panicked and who was locked in the basement. Kept getting that visual over and over again. And the moment I had my surgery, that little girl stopped panicking. It was so profound.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:27:56

Yeah. That's so interesting. Thank you for sharing that because that's the importance of people listening if especially if you're a practitioner of any kind. Listen to what your patient's telling you because they're living it, and it's so real to them. And sometimes when we kind of blow things off a little bit, which is a huge disservice to our patients because what they're telling you is their life experience and what is actually happening. You're just flying in for, like, 15 minutes, and they've lived in this I call it the Taj Mahal their whole entire life. So, they kind of know themselves, especially if they're awake and alert and conscious. Those are all interchangeable. That they have a concept and an idea of what is going on, and sometimes it's an innate knowing. And, you know, it sounds like to me, may I interject a little bit?

Boots Knighton [: 00:28:52

Mm-hmm. Please.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:28:53

It sounds like your inner child got trapped somehow. Because when you have, like, a little version of yourself, and we all have inner children. Okay? And sometimes when things happen in another time and place or even in this lifetime and early on, that little child gets really, you know, angry, sad, defiant, and, you know, feels like it's been abandoned. So, by you, you know, opening the chest up and allowing her to come out has been very helpful, I'm sure.

Boots Knighton [: 00:29:25

Oh, it's changed my life. I say I am the luckiest person ever that I got to have open heart surgery because what it did was it opened up this whole avenue of healing, mind, body, soul that was not accessible to me prior.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:29:43

Sometimes what we have to understand is this. We are presented with lessons to learn in this lifetime, and sometimes we are so like, you got to be kidding me, that type of attitude, or it's like, I didn't sign up for this. And it's just like, you know, we want to do a bypass, and sometimes bypass heart surgery, you know, joke here. So, we want to bypass the difficult stuff and get to the delicious stuff. But the thing is, it's not about the destination, it's the journey. And it's all the rich stuff that you gain by having these experiences. Yes. I'm speaking from my personal experience. It's like, yeah, it was very traumatic. And looking back on it from where I'm at this vantage point now at age 65, I could see how everything lined up beautifully to get me to where I am now. And so, the thing is, it sounds like that you had a reawakening with your heart, basically. If you came into this lifetime, with what we call a carryover from another lifetime with the cardiac stuff or whatever was going on with you, sometimes it's like we didn't finish what we needed to learn in another time and place, and we're working on it in this lifetime as well. It's just and it's not a good thing or bad thing. It's just what it is. It's more lessons about learning to open your heart. That's what it sounds like to me.

Boots Knighton [: 00:31:16

Oh, absolutely. And I just did a whole TEDx Talk about it and just how the 5 minutes before my open-heart surgery were the 5 most important minutes of my life. And just a quick synopsis, I mean, I just realized it was then and there I had to acknowledge I could die, been suffering for months leading up to it, and I was on this gurney waiting to roll into the operating room. Didn't have my money with me. I didn't have my accomplishments or my failures. It was just me, my soul, and my meat suit. Right? Since that time, I've done a lot of excavating of what my two regrets were, which was not writing a book and not skiing enough. And I'm a ski instructor and, you know, I've skied so much.

Boots Knighton [: 00:32:06

What I realized is that the skiing really represented the fact that I hadn't fully, fully, completely experienced joy. And I've been thinking about that a lot. And one of the things I wanted to talk to you about today is, when all the different heart patients I've had the privilege of interviewing after their surgeries, everyone says how different they are. And I want to unpack that and different on a soul level, number 1. And then the other thing that I've noticed is, the heart transplant patients I've had the honor of meeting, a lot of them seem like no one's home. And I want to unpack that too because I have been saying in fact, I just wrote a guest article for a blog, and the big thing that the owner of the blog wanted me or the author of the blog wanted me to focus on was I keep saying how different I am on a sole level. And I've had a really hard time understanding why. And, I mean, the only thing I can come up with is that I had a, you know, surgeon actually touch my heart, and I was on the heart lung machine. And so, I was just hoping you could help all of his heart patients understand all of that. I am not even remotely close to who I was before open heart surgery.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:33:40

Boots, that's not an unusual thing. I think it's more common than people are acknowledging. I've always found too is that, you know, you look at heart patients. I'm going to say everything's energy once again because it is. Okay? We have energy here, and sometimes when people who may have needed heart surgery, they have a blockage here. And it's not just a physical blockage. It's an energetic blockage, especially if you've been traumatized, been hurt, betrayed, or whatever. We've all had those things. And how we cope with that, sometimes it's just easier to ignore and put up a block and not ever feel again. Right? And it's an energetic block. So, just think about it this way. If you've had this energetic block for a very long time and sometimes it's about not forgiving, forgiving others, but most importantly, not forgiving yourself. Okay? Holding grudges and all that other stuff. All that comes into play. So, what happens is this, you know, eventually a person I'm just going to throw something out here. Eventually a person starts having chest pain. Okay? Because this is still here, but it's here. Okay? So, a lot of times, people may internalize their emotions and not want to feel. It's still there. Okay? It's energy. It's still there. So, they have a heart attack. They need to get stents or they need to have a bypass surgery. Okay? And they may even need to get a valve replaced. You know, there's so many different things that could happen with the heart. And so, what happens is that they get the bypass, and a lot of times in their recovery time, they go through a period of depression. It's interesting, and I kind of asked my higher self, show me what happens with this. And so, they showed me this. It was, okay. So, you had a huge blockage here physically and etherically, okay, in the invisible. Now you have fixed the physical problem, so there's no other blockage, so you have to handle what the emotions were. And sometimes those emotions get turned inward into depression because now they're feeling where they hadn't been feeling before. Do you understand? Because their heart is the physical organ is getting perfused with blood and is getting healthier, but yet there's a disconnect because that emotional barrier is still there. Okay? Meaning that they need to look at some personal things as to why they're depressed and what's the sadness. Sometimes it's just like heartbreak or loss or, you know, betrayal or whatever it is. So, anything that makes you feel like, you know, you're going to just shut your heart down and close it off and never feel again. They're learning how to feel again. So that's, like, the first step because with depression sometimes, it's like there could be a lot of anger. And when anger is, like, inward, it turns into depression. So, it's about reintroducing them to feeling and being okay with that, whatever comes up.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:37:04

Because I feel that people think that emotions are like and experiencing their emotions is liking opening the lid of Pandora's box. It's like you don't know what the heck's going to come out, and God forbid, you don't know that lid's going to ever shut again. Good news is it does shut, and you will be a completely different person once you step into that energetic bubble of what that is and just feel away. And it's not about projecting it onto other people. It's just saying I'm feeling sad and just being with that. And then just you take another step, and next thing you know, you're on the other side of that energetic bubble, and that energy turns to neutrality, and it no longer has an impact on you.

Boots Knighton [: 00:37:52

Beautiful. And, you know, my surgeon, his physician assistant warned me. I'll never forget the day before they had me check into the hospital just so I could get, you know, settled, and they do all the preliminary stuff. And she just sat down to prepare me for, you know, waking up on a ventilator and what to expect in the hospital. And then she said, Anne, you know, be prepared for cardiac depression is how they refer to it. And, luckily, I had a therapist already on board and had for several years. And so, I was able to process it with my therapist, but I remember it came on really strong and intensely. And every cardiac patient I have interviewed has reported the same. And it's one of the many reasons why I started this podcast because I've had other issues with depression in my life, and this was, like, its own unique feeling. There was no other place for me to turn to, to truly find solace or camaraderie. And because of that, I just felt like once I got past it, I wanted to just pay it forward and be of help to other heart patients. Because the depression afterwards, there are heart patients that have experienced it way worse than I have. It can almost be life threatening.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:39:19

Absolutely. Especially if they don't know what it is. I feel that the mechanism that I just shared with you is how that happens. So, I got that. It was just like I was, because when I'm having conversations in my head all the time, you know, with other things because I'm just curious, you know. And I was just like, why is that so? And we see it so often and I realized, oh my god. The light bulb went on. This is what's actually going on.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:39:46

I feel and I think what you're doing is amazing asset to prepare people for that. And, you know, I also think too, if they don't handle that, I think it's a possibility that it could have a recurrence as well because we want to clean that up and just move forward, and it changes you in really deep ways. Now, you know, let's move on to, like, the transplant stuff. You know, when you do transplants, I haven't done heart transplants. I've done pancreas and kidneys as an assistant. But, you know, the cardiac thing is just like, I love cardiac, but it's just not my spiel. But I know that when people who've had transplanted organs, okay, that organ came from another human being. It has DNA. It has genetic memory and everything else. It has, you know, encoded in it because when you are born, you plant it in your body. So, your organs have it as well. It's not just like it's in your body and it's no place else, not in your organism. It's everywhere in every cell. So, when you transplant an organ into a person, it's not unusual. I've heard this, and I haven't witnessed this personally where people start having peculiar cravings that they never had before. If a person, all of a sudden, you know, really loved chocolate a lot that passed away and then donated the heart, it’s like in the person who's receiving it never really liked chocolate, they all of a sudden had this thing for chocolate.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:41:31

So, things like that happen too, but also maybe mannerisms and maybe the way they cope with things and stuff like that might shift as well. But I also think if you put a new organ in, it's like the body needs to get recalibrated to it energetically as well. So, I think there's going to be shifts and changes on a different perspective just because, number 1, it's a different DNA. Okay? So, your body's going to try to embrace and integrate that. I find that when we have to remove things, it's like paying reverence to those body parts and thanking them for the gifts that they gave them and realizing that, you know, what? It's time to move on, and I appreciate you. And I'm grateful for, you know, like the uterus, that you gave me the gift of being a woman and to bear children and just appreciating and loving it so it goes off with ease and grace, because it's an energetic part of you. It's still there. So, we talk about, like, phantom pain, you know, when people lose their leg. Guess what? Just because you get an organ out doesn't mean that you don't have phantom pain. You still have phantom pain because it's still part of you, and it's like a holograph of what was there before. So, it's about having a dialogue with your body and your body parts and just loving and appreciating every part of you. And thanking it and paying reverence to the, you know, the wisdom and the gifts that it gave you as well. So, you know, with transplants as well too, that's the same thing and also embracing the new one. That might sound a little crazy to some people, but it's not. It's an energy. Yeah.

Boots Knighton [: 00:43:21

Well, it's like if you walk into a room and someone's really grumpy and you can feel it, at least I can, and that changes the whole energetics of the room versus someone who is a comedic. Right? That changes the room. So, scale that down to just talking to your organ.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:43:38

When you have any type of surgery to remove something, your body's going through a grieving process. So, and that kind of piggybacks on to what I was saying too. Just love it up, appreciate it, you know, accept it, honor it. Because I think so many people just disconnect themselves. Just get it out of there. I don't want it there. You know, like, especially if it's something really bad. It's just like, yes, and it needs love and appreciation as well for what it is. And when we forget to do that, we get kind of lost in another time and place because energetically, it's still connected to us. You're sending it off with a blessing, so to say.

Boots Knighton [: 00:44:24

Oh, that's beautiful. So, heart centeredness, what does that mean?

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:44:30

For me, I define it as being in the present moment, being open, receptive, allowing yourself to receive, and in the flow. I think that probably surmises the whole thing.

Boots Knighton [: 00:44:51

I was not that, but now I am.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:44:54

Yeah. And look at the growth that you've had and the experience and the wisdom that you've gained from all of that. I mean, that's huge. And, you know, I know that that's part of where you're going in the future and what you're going to be assisting many, many, many people with. Because sometimes we teach what we've experienced, you know, because we've experienced it. To me, that's just like I would want somebody who is walking their talk and is living it versus, you know, from a textbook because that's not reality.

Boots Knighton [: 00:45:31

I remember another person I've interviewed recently said, hire the doctors and the practitioners that have the health that you want.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:45:43

Absolutely. That's key. You know, your intuition is your inner barometer that's going to guide you to your next steps, nobody else's. If your intuition is screaming at you, don't do it. Please don't do it because you'll live to regret it. We've all had those little things happen where that little voice inside, please don't do that, but you ignored it and did it anyway, and then you paid the price. This is happening as we evolve and people are tapping into being in their physical body and being in the present moment. You're going to have more access to that little voice than you ever had before. And you could trust that because it is your inner wisdom, and it's not going to steer you wrong. Now you have the naysayers on the outside that are saying, well, you know, this and this and this and this, and that's the right path for them maybe. They're not listening. They're not awake. Because I think we have three realms of people. People who are awake, people who are awakening, and people who are still asleep. So, the thing is, if you're awakening and you're all of a sudden how this happens for some people is that things have been working really well, and then all of a sudden, they're not, and you can't figure out why, it's because it's time for you to look at some things in your life, be it your health, your wellness factor, your connectedness to yourself, whatever that is. It's like you have no reference point for moving forward. You're waking up, and it's okay not to have a reference point. Don't be scared. Don't go down the rabbit hole of fear because we are in such a powerful time right now that whatever you focus your attention on, you're going to create instantaneously before the thought process is complete. It's that fast note. So, what I'm going to tell you is this. We're at a point in humanity's evolution where anything that was created out of fear, lack, abuse of power is falling away because we've elevated ourselves. That's down here. We're up here. Our natural tendency sometimes is to hang on to what we're losing because, oh my god. You know? What am I going to do? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know? It's a big time and what the word I'm going to say is trust. It's about trusting right now because there's a lot happening that is lining up behind the scenes that we cannot see, but it's in motion. And sometimes that scares the bejabbers out of us, especially if we like to control things and have everything figured out. This is a time where we're shifting paradigms here.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:48:33

So, I recently ended up a contract with an organization that I had been contracting with. I'm going to share a personal story. It had gone to the point where I was feeling as if I was not appreciated, valued, or respected, and I was being really disrespected. And, you know, they ended up pulling our contract a year and a half later because they were having financial issues, but they kind of blindsided the surgeons. Meaning that they didn't let them know that we were going away and not going to be assisting them anymore, especially doing robotic stuff, which is really technical. So, I decided, you know, what? Enough. Because I would never allow somebody to treat me like that in my personal life, but I'm allowing in my professional life. Oh, hell no. We're done. So, I ended up giving my notice, and what was really interesting, I took a little side trip to Sedona. I'm in Sedona right now, so I kind of travel here quite a bit. I live in Southern California, so it's relatively close by, sidebar. So, anyway, so what had happened was as I was traveling from San Diego to Sedona, I noticed in the 500-mile journey, I would see a dead coyote on the side of the road. I saw, like, 5 of them over, like, 500 miles. I'm like, well, that is really weird. I pay attention to stuff like that. And if you know anything about animal totems in Native American, coyotes are the trickster. They're like the betrayers. They do the trickster energy. So, if you're not aware of stuff, it's like you get tricked, okay, or duped. And especially if you're sensitive or you're very trusting, it’s like sometimes you get uber betrayed. Okay? I made that decision, and I ended up going to see one of my mentors. And another trip that I had taken last fall was up to Mount Shasta. And when I traveled to Mount Shasta, I have a connection with the White Buffalo Calf Woman. And so, whenever I go there and I go to meditation, she etherically gives me gifts. And so, over the last 5 years, I've got a whole list of gifts etherically that she's given to me. And on the last trip, she gave me a satchel with arrows and a bow, and she said, you stop dreaming. It's time to start dreaming and send your arrows of intention out to the universe. Okay. So, once I made that decision, somehow, I ended up in this antique store. Don't ask me how this happened, but I did. And so, I come across this satchel covered in a coyote pelt with arrows in it and a bow. And in the background, the music is playing by Sia, Unstoppable. I bought the thing. It's in my office.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:51:28

So, what I'm saying is that it's trust. I don't know, you know, yeah. That was a big chunk of cash, but you know what? I have to trust because I am honoring who I am because I was in complete misalignment with who I was by still being there. When stuff like that happens, I always say I'm getting upgraded, and I am. And I just walk away and know and trust. So, I invite people, please don't be attached to something because it's leaving and you've outgrown it. Please allow it to go with grace and ease and just keep moving forward because what's in front of you, even though you can't see, is probably more incredible than you're going to ever want to imagine.

Boots Knighton [: 00:52:14

Amen. Let go of the story that you were holding on to in order to allow in the miracles. And every hard moment in my life has opened up so many miraculous miracles to come in.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:52:33

What happens is that those amazing miracles are there in our energy field. Okay? They're all there. It's just we need to step out of our own way, raise our frequency so it matches the energy of what that is.

Boots Knighton [: 00:52:51

Yeah. I needed to hear that again today. I need to hear it over and over. And I write every morning before 7 AM, and it's basically channeling. It's crazy what comes off my pen when I just allow myself to free write. And it's interesting. I ask my soul every morning what it needs to tell me that day. And what was interesting was the whole month leading up to me breaking my leg, I've been having heart issues again. And I was so worried about my heart. And every morning, I was just writing, be careful. Be careful. Be careful every morning. And I've never written be careful before. I've never told myself to be careful. And this one day on December 9th, I decided I needed to test my heart. And so, by me testing my heart and that morning, I wrote, be careful. Decide in order to test my heart, I was going to climb a mountain. And it's a very familiar mountain for me. It's a backcountry ski run off of Teton Pass here on the border of Wyoming and Idaho. And 2 turns into skiing back down, I hit a rock and I broke both my tibia and fibula. I needed to have a helicopter rescue. I had to have emergency surgery to have a rod put in my tibia. Anyway, it's a crazy story. It gets even crazier from there. But my point is that we have to be willing to listen because my soul was telling me, be careful. Be careful. Be careful. I mean, think about the crazy thing I just said. Oh, I want to test my heart, so I'm going to go climb a mountain.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:54:29

That sounds like an ego thing to me.

Boots Knighton [: 00:54:31

Doesn't it? I talk about it now and not feel like a complete total idiot, and I shouldn't judge myself. I mean, we're all doing the best we can. And I've unpacked this with my therapist and an intuitive friend of mine to, like, the cows have come home. And, I mean, of course, there's, like, beautiful things that have been coming from this. Right? Why not get the most out of life? And while you're at it, be willing to listen to yourself so you can get the most out of life and have the courage to listen. And I just didn't want to believe that I still needed to be careful, and I just want my life, and I want to do what I want to do. Right? It was just such this interesting moment for me of learning that, nearly had fatal consequences again. And it's just like, man.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:55:22

You know, what? It's a theme and variations of probably the same core issues. They look at it from that perspective. Because it's about listening, but it's also about merging the mind with the heart. It's like the mind is the masculine, the heart is the feminine. So, it's like marrying the 2. So, imagining a figure of 8, an infinity sign starting with your head, crossing your throat, going into your heart. You know, it's just like, so, an infinity sign is constantly in motion. Right? The energy is constantly in motion. Sometimes when we get lopsided where it's like, you know, our ego kind of comes out and stuff, or even when we get too emotional, there's got to be the balance. So, maybe you're learning about balance and, you know, being okay with it. That's the other part. You know? So, making peace with what had been and what's to come.

Boots Knighton [: 00:56:18

And that's been one of my biggest learnings since heart surgery. Like, it is the lack of balance, and I'm definitely way more masculine energy or have been. And that has been a process that has had a slow, long, painful death of, like, being in one. I was definitely more in my head than my heart. And I have found a lot of heart patients are really head heavy for a while after surgery.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:56:47

They're trying to figure it out. So, what's interesting is this, is, like, if you could visualize 2 columns, one of them is doing, one of them is being. Okay? One of them is being in your head, that's doing. Being is in your body. In your head, you're trying to figure things out. You're trying to make things happen. You're pushing a boulder up a hill. It's really fatiguing, exhausting. And it's no surprise that people are wickedly stressed out and then they create health concerns for themselves with their health and well-being. Okay? And, of course, when you're in your head, you're never in the present moment. You're in the past contemplating yesterday or trying to figure tomorrow out. You aren't able to experience your emotions because you need to be in your physical body to experience that. So, when people say I think I feel, you know, that they're not in your body because you can't think you feel your emotions. Okay? They're intellectualizing their emotions. So, when you go over to being versus doing, okay, you're in your body, you're in your heart space, and how you access that is going through mindful activity. And mindful activity could be as recommended as doing formal meditation like sitting in lotus position to just walking out in nature, you know, petting your favorite pet, you know, spending time with children. Anything that's going to keep you in the present moment where you lose all sense of time and place. We've had those moments, you know. You do a creative venture, some people knit or crochet, and they get lost in time. Or if you read a great book, you get lost in time, and time is like it just doesn't exist because, really, it doesn't. It's an earth concept. So, the point is, is that when you're in your physical body, you could feel. Okay? Because you have to have a physical body to feel and you have to be in it. You're in the present moment when you're able to feel.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 00:58:41

So, take that a step further is that when you are in your physical body and you could feel, you have more of an alignment with your higher self, your inner wisdom, your intuition, all interchangeable, all the same thing. So, you have access to gaining information and wisdom. It's like creating a still point within yourself without even trying too hard. Okay? So, sometimes when you're doing a mindful activity, you get these great intuitive hits. It's like, you get a divine download, and now you go into divine doing, and then you come back. So, another story I'll share because it's, like, one of my favorite ones. You and I both have pets. I had at the time that I'm telling the story, I had this cat named Max. He was a Siamese, and he was a royal handful. And, Max had to go to the vet at o dark 30 in the morning at 7 o'clock for his annual checkup. And those people who know me, I'm not a morning person. So, you know, usually, I don't get up till 9:30, 10. So, I had to get him up, and trying to hurt a cat is always a story in itself. But I got him, got him in the car, driving to the vet, dropped him off, and on the way back to my house, there was a sign that says garage sale. And I'm like, my heart’s still saying, oh, you need to go to the garage. I'm like, oh, no. I don't. I need to go back to bed. I'm exhausted. I want to go to sleep. Oh, no. No. No. No. You need to go. They were insistent. You need to go to this garage sale. And I'm like, oh, come on. And I said, okay. I followed my intuition, and, you know, I saw where the garage sale was. I couldn't park, you know, right in front of the house. It was 3 houses down. Parked. And I'm still on this conversation. I said, you know, I don't know why I'm going to the garage sale. I said, I should be having the garage sale because I have so much junk. I don't need any more stuff. I mean, I'm having this conversation. So, I go in there and I look around and I come out and I said, see? I didn't need anything. Now as I walked remember 3 houses? As I was walking back to my car, out of the second driveway pulls this car, and it was, like, an old client of mine that I haven't seen in years.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 01:00:51

And she said, oh my god. I was just thinking about you. And there's a professor at the California Institute of Human Sciences that wants to meet you. I said, okay. Great. So, she connected us. I ended up teaching a class there. And through this professor, one of my things on my bucket list were to speak at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. Well, it just so happened that this professor, Spencer Summer’s there at Rhinebeck, New York at the Omega, and she does in charge of some programs. So, guess what? I got to speak at Omega Institute. So, my point being is, like, I was following my intuition. If I ignored that, I would have missed that whole opportunity. The problem with our society, we're stuck on the doing part ad nauseam, and it really has harmed us on so many levels. And it's about learning to start with mindful activity, get your divine downloads, and then go into divine doing. It's a different way of being and thinking, but I think you'll end up being more in the flow because you're able to tap into all of those delicious things.

Boots Knighton [: 01:02:00

Happening for us, not to us.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 01:02:02

Exactly. You know, we think, oh, no. And you're so right. It's just like, it's all a choice. You could either go kicking or screaming or just go into surrender or allowing. And just because it's all going to happen anyway. It's like, I remember somebody used to say to me, suffering is optional. It's a choice. It's like, I choose not to suffer. It just takes too much energy.

Boots Knighton [: 01:02:28

Well, as we wind down here, how do we find you?

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 01:02:32

I have a TV, radio, and podcast show called The Doctor Dolores Show, and it's on Inspired Choices Network. And it airs live every Wednesday, 12 noon, high noon Pacific Standard Time. And I talk about all different types of subjects. I really enjoy helping people and teaching people how to trust their intuition, learn how to have a relationship with themselves, and become their own best friends because it's really about us having a relationship with ourselves. And the longest relationship we'll ever have in our life is the one we have with ourselves. And people, you know, sometimes aren't the kindest they are to themselves or they kind of ignore themselves, but we wouldn't do that to our best friend. Why would we do it to ourselves, you know? If you have problems being grounded in the present moment, and I think a lot of people do, at this time, I have a guided meditation. If you go to my website, there's a pop up, and it's a video meditation that allows you to go to be in the present moment.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 01:03:42

So, if you go to my website, doctordolorefazzino.com, and you'll see the pop up. Just sign up for that, and it's like a 7-minute video. And it allows you to ground yourself in multiple dimensions, which I think is so important and necessary at this time. Because there's a lot of ungrounded people out there, and when you're in your body, you will notice a huge difference. It's like something clicks in and you're like, oh, yeah. Okay. Here I am.

Boots Knighton [: 01:04:09

This has been everything. Thank you so much.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 01:04:13

You're so very welcome.

Boots Knighton [: 01:04:15

And I hope that, audience, you will get in touch with, Dr. Fazzino, and I know I will be. And I feel like I've made a lifelong friend today. And I just think that what you're doing is wonderful, and we are all beneficiaries of your incredible work.

Dr. Dolores Fazzino [: 01:04:35

Well, thank you so much, and I appreciate all the kind words, Boots, and carry on with what you're doing. You've got important work to do. We all do, and it's time.

Boots Knighton [: 01:04:46

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.