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Dr. Kelly Livingston

@thevitalspiritmethod

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The science & soul of healing
✨Gut-Brain ✨ Nervous System ✨ Hormones
🌈 The Vital Spirit Podcast + YouTube ↓
Naturopathic Physician | 13 years

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✨ WHAT IF HEALING DOESN’T MEAN FEELING LESS AFRAID?✨

We often think that the more we heal, the less afraid we’ll feel. But that’s not necessarily how growth works.

Sometimes, the more we learn about ourselves, the more we become aware of the things we’ve been avoiding. Old wounds, uncomfortable emotions, or decisions we’ve been putting off because we don’t know what will happen next.

And it’s tempting to interpret that discomfort as a sign that we’re not ready.

But what if the goal isn’t to stop feeling afraid?

What if it’s learning to trust yourself enough to face something difficult, knowing that you can develop the capacity to move through it?

That doesn’t mean forcing yourself into situations you’re not ready for. It means gradually building a different relationship with fear, getting curious about what it might be protecting, and discovering that you may be more capable than you once believed.

In my conversation with therapist Heather Waxman, we explore why fear can be part of our healing journey, how learning to stay present with difficult emotions can strengthen self-trust, and what it really means to come home to ourselves.

🎧 The Vital Spirit Podcast | Episode 76

How to Build Self-Trust and Heal Your Nervous System with @heatherwaxman

⚡️Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Link in bio!

Comment FEAR and I will DM you the direct link. 🫶🏼

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⚡️What if your health isn’t just about how you feel, but about what becomes possible in your life?

In my conversation with Dr. Meghan Walker on The Vital Spirit Podcast, she shared something that speaks to the heart of why I practice medicine.

She believes that when people have their health, they’re capable of changing the world.

And I love that she immediately expands what changing the world actually means.

It doesn’t have to mean doing something extraordinary on a global scale.

It might mean raising your children. Teaching in a classroom. Showing up for someone you love. Creating something meaningful. Bringing a little more kindness into the world around you.

Impact doesn’t have to be enormous to be meaningful.

And health can be one of the resources that helps us participate more fully in the lives we want to live.

As a naturopathic physician, I’ve spent years helping people investigate why they’re exhausted, inflamed, overwhelmed, or simply not feeling like themselves.

Of course, I want to help people understand their physiology, address underlying contributors to illness, and improve their symptoms.

But that’s not where the conversation ends.

I want to know what feeling better would make possible for them.

What would they have the energy to pursue? What relationships would they have more capacity to nurture? What parts of themselves might they rediscover?

And importantly, your ability to make a meaningful impact is never determined by how healthy you are. People living with chronic illness and disability contribute extraordinary things every day.

Health is not a measure of human worth. It’s one of the resources we can support so that more of life becomes accessible to us.

This is what moving beyond the “line of fine” means to me.

Not simply surviving or functioning, but creating the conditions for greater vitality, connection, purpose, and possibility.

⚡️ Episode 75: Why Being “Fine” Isn’t the Same as Being Healthy with @drmeghanwalker

Comment IMPACT and I’ll send you the full episode!

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⚡️You can disagree with someone without disrespecting them. And you can ask questions without making accusations.

After explaining why I don’t accept insurance, I received disrespectful comments questioning my qualifications and integrity.

I’m practicing what I teach: noticing my reaction, regulating my nervous system, and responding intentionally.

But responding mindfully doesn’t mean staying silent when misinformation is shared.

I’ve been licensed as a naturopathic physician in Connecticut for 13 years. I hold a BA in Psychology from Columbia University and a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine degree from the University of Bridgeport.

Accredited four-year naturopathic medical programs teach anatomy, physiology, pathology, biochemistry, pharmacology, physical diagnosis, clinical nutrition, botanical medicine, and more, alongside supervised clinical training. Licensure requires examinations and other state-specific requirements.

Naturopathic physicians are not MDs or DOs. We have a distinct educational pathway and scope of practice, which varies by state. That differs from using similar titles without equivalent training or licensure.

In Connecticut, my scope includes appropriate laboratory testing and naturopathic care, but not prescribing pharmaceutical medications. Not accepting insurance for office visits is a transparent practice choice, not a reflection of my licensure. Patients know my fees before beginning care.

My purpose is to educate and empower people to make informed health choices. You don’t have to choose naturopathic medicine to respect those who practice it.

I welcome thoughtful questions and scientific discussion. What I won’t welcome is harassment, personal attacks, or repeated misinformation presented as fact.

I’ve deleted harassing comments, blocked accounts, and responded publicly when needed. Boundaries and compassion can coexist.

Learn more through the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians and the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education.

Approach what you don’t understand with curiosity.

We can disagree respectfully, ask better questions, and respond with intention.

That, too, is nervous system health. 🫶🏼

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✨ YOUR NECK & JAW ARE TIGHT… BUT HAVE YOU CHECKED HERE?

We often stretch where we feel tension. But our bodies don’t function as isolated muscles.

Here, I’m using a yoga block beneath my lateral rib cage, just below my armpit.

I settle into the support, notice the pressure, and gently explore different positions.

This region contains muscles and fascia involved in shoulder movement and stability, including the latissimus dorsi, serratus anterior, and pectoral muscles.

Your shoulder blades move across your rib cage, relying on coordinated activity throughout the upper back, chest, and shoulder girdle.

Changes in mobility or muscular coordination may influence tension elsewhere, including the neck and potentially the jaw.

Research identifies relationships between jaw dysfunction, cervical muscle activity, and neck pain. Pressure beneath the armpit isn’t a proven treatment for jaw tension, but exploring the shoulder girdle and rib cage may change how we experience upper-body tension.

And yes, I’m yawning and sighing!

These behaviors can accompany changes in arousal and alertness, but aren’t reliable signs of vagal activation or emotional release.

What interests me is how gentle pressure, supported positioning, and mindful movement change the sensory information our nervous system receives.

Fascia is richly innervated, and muscles and connective tissues contribute to proprioception, our sense of body position and movement.

With hypermobility, I’ve learned that more stretching isn’t always what my body needs. Support and sensory awareness matter too.

This is body literacy.

Support first. Move slowly. Notice what changes.

Avoid strong pressure directly into the armpit, where important nerves and blood vessels travel. Stop if you experience pain, numbness, or tingling.

Have you noticed your neck, shoulders, or jaw feeling different after working with another part of your body?

Follow @thevitalspiritmethod for more on fascia, nervous system regulation, yoga, and mind-body medicine. 🪷

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✨ What if the decision to stop settling for “fine” could change more than just your own health?

What if it could change what your children and the people around you believe is possible for themselves?

In my conversation with Dr. Meghan Walker on The Vital Spirit Podcast, we explored how women’s health decisions can influence future generations.

When a woman chooses to do something difficult for her health, she may give others permission to do difficult things, too.

Consider what happens when we question why we’re exhausted, why symptoms persist, or why we’ve been told everything is “normal” when we don’t feel well. We’re challenging the idea that simply getting by is good enough.

When we seek answers, establish boundaries, or change familiar patterns, we’re doing more than addressing symptoms. We’re raising the standard for how we want to experience our lives.

As a naturopathic physician, this speaks to the heart of why I do this work.

Health is not simply the absence of disease, a normal laboratory result, or the ability to keep functioning despite feeling depleted.

It’s about vitality, resilience, and the capacity to participate fully in our relationships, pursue what matters to us, and experience the lives we want to live.

But there’s something important for women to recognize: we don’t have to justify prioritizing our health by proving how much it benefits everyone else. Our health matters in its own right.

And when we honor that, we may also influence what the next generation expects from health and life.

This is part of what Meghan calls moving beyond “the line of fine.” Health isn’t measured solely by how much we can endure, but also by how fully we can live.

⚡️ Episode 75 | The Vital Spirit Podcast
Why Being “Fine” Isn’t the Same as Being Healthy with @drmeghanwalker

We explore health, courage, purpose, and the decisions that shape our lives.

Comment VITALITY below, and I’ll send you the full episode! 🎧

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⚡️EXHAUSTED, BUT YOUR LABS ARE “NORMAL”?

What if an important clue to your fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, or difficulty concentrating has been overlooked?

The American Society of Hematology just released updated guidelines for diagnosing iron deficiency, recognizing something I’ve been seeing in clinical practice for years.

You can have normal hemoglobin, a normal CBC, and STILL have depleted iron stores.

The new guidelines recommend a ferritin threshold of 30 ng/mL or lower for diagnosing iron deficiency in most adults, rather than the historically used threshold of 15.

Why does this matter?

Because iron does far more than prevent anemia. It’s essential for mitochondrial energy production, thyroid physiology, and neurotransmitter pathways involved in attention, motivation, and mood.

And low ferritin isn’t simply a number to correct.

It’s a clue that deserves investigation.

Are you losing iron? Not absorbing it? Is inflammation interfering with how your body uses it?

After more than 20 years in healthcare, one thing I know is that women deserve to understand their own physiology rather than simply being told their labs are fine.

Want to understand YOUR ferritin and iron results?

I’ve created a Ferritin Guide to help you understand your numbers, recognize important patterns, and ask better questions about your health.

Visit the LINK IN MY BIO to get the guide or comment GUIDE and I’ll send you the link.

You can also explore my $27 Beyond Your Numbers workshop or listen to Episode 67 of The Vital Spirit Podcast on Ferritin for a deeper dive.

Ferritin isn’t the diagnosis. It’s the clue.

#Ferritin #IronDeficiency #WomensHealth #FunctionalMedicine #BrainFog

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✨ Why does yoga sometimes leave you feeling MORE tired?

A patient recently asked me why she felt completely exhausted after yin yoga, a practice generally associated with relaxation rather than physical exertion.

The answer may involve the relationship between chronic stress, autonomic nervous system regulation, and our perception of fatigue.

During prolonged stress, increased sympathetic nervous system activity and activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis can contribute to heightened arousal and alertness.

When we finally slow down, we may become more aware of underlying fatigue that was harder to recognize during periods of heightened arousal.

Yoga combines movement, breathing, and interoceptive awareness, our ability to perceive internal bodily sensations.

Research suggests that slow, controlled breathing can influence cardiovascular autonomic regulation, including respiratory sinus arrhythmia and heart rate variability (HRV), while contemplative practices may alter how we perceive internal sensations.

But here’s an important distinction.

Feeling tired doesn’t necessarily indicate increased parasympathetic activity, improved vagal function, or the release of stored trauma.

Fatigue is multifactorial. Sleep quality, metabolic health, hormonal changes, nutritional status, and even the muscular demands of gentle movement can contribute.

And there’s a meaningful difference between feeling deeply relaxed and feeling genuinely depleted.

As a naturopathic physician, I encourage patients to become curious about these responses rather than automatically interpreting them as signs of healing.

Persistent exhaustion, dizziness, or worsening symptoms after gentle activity deserve further investigation.

Have you ever felt unexpectedly tired after yoga?

Follow @thevitalspiritmethod for more conversations about the nervous system, mind-body medicine, and the science of healing. ✨

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⚡️How many things have you talked yourself out of because you weren’t sure you could handle them?

Maybe it’s trying something new, making a career change, speaking up for yourself, or finally making your health a priority.

In this week’s conversation on The Vital Spirit Podcast, @drmeghanwalker and I explored what it means to take risks, trust ourselves, and create lives that reflect what matters most to us.

Meghan recently moved her family to Barcelona, a decision that prompted plenty of people to tell her, “I’d love to do something like that, but I never could.”

But what if courage isn’t something we’re simply born with?

What if it’s something we develop through practice?

Meghan introduced an idea I love: return on decision, rather than simply return on investment.

Every time we make a small decision outside our familiar patterns and take ownership of its consequences, we have an opportunity to discover something about ourselves.

We begin to recognize our capacity to navigate uncertainty, respond to challenges, and trust our own judgment.

And over time, those seemingly small decisions can make the bigger ones feel possible.

What I appreciate about this perspective is how closely it connects to the larger conversation Meghan and I had about health.

Because what is the purpose of cultivating greater health and vitality if not to participate more fully in our own lives?

To have the energy, resilience, and freedom to pursue what matters to us, even when the path isn’t entirely clear.

Perhaps the next time you catch yourself thinking, “I’d love to do that, but I never could,” you might ask:

✨ What’s one small decision I could make today that moves me closer to the life I want to live?

🎙️ NEW EPISODE | The Vital Spirit Podcast, Episode 75

Why Being “Fine” Isn’t the Same as Being Healthy with Dr. Meghan Walker.

Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Link in bio!

#VitalSpiritPodcast #NaturopathicMedicine #PersonalGrowth #ImpactMedicine

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⚡️Ten years ago, my life changed in ways I could never have anticipated.

I was moving through the most traumatic loss of my life, my own dark night of the soul. I couldn’t see how I would find my way through.

I had already devoted my life to helping others heal. I couldn’t have anticipated how deeply it would shape the way I practice medicine.

I learned that no one could do the inner work for me.

I needed people to love me, listen, and help me find my footing. I also had to learn how to be with myself, understand my nervous system, my patterns, and the ways I had learned to survive.

Healing didn’t mean returning to who I was before. It meant learning to live with what happened while making room for peace, connection, joy, and self again.

Today, I sit with women navigating complex physical and emotional challenges.

My intention is to create a space where they feel safe enough to be fully human, to be heard, and to participate in their own healing.

That intention lives in my clinical practice and The Vital Spirit Podcast, where these conversations reach beyond my office.

If you’re in a dark chapter right now, I want you to know this:

✨You don’t have to figure out the next ten years.

Start with today.✨

Let someone stand beside you. Ask for help. Find one small thing that helps you feel grounded. A breath, a walk outside, a moment of rest.

Give yourself permission to grieve without rushing to turn your pain into a lesson.

There is no magic pill for grief, and no single path through it. You don’t have to walk it alone.

The lotus symbolizes awakening in Buddhist traditions. Om Mani Padme Hum, a mantra associated with compassion, reminds me that tenderness can exist amid suffering. I carry these words tattooed on my body as a reminder.

The jewel is in the lotus. 🪷

If you’re navigating your own darkness, I’ve shared more of my experience in The Dark Night of the Soul, along with other episodes exploring grief and healing. I hope these conversations help you feel less alone.

If there’s one thing I hope you take from this, it’s that you don’t have to become someone else to begin healing.

You can begin exactly where you are. As you are. 🫶

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✨What are you actually paying for when you see a naturopathic doctor?

It’s a question that came up during my conversation with Dr. Meghan Walker on The Vital Spirit Podcast, and I think it deserves a more meaningful answer than the number of minutes we spend together.

Meghan has been a mentor of mine for years, helping me build a sustainable practice without compromising the depth of care I believe in.

Yes, a new patient visit with me lasts 60–90 minutes. We explore medical history, labs, nutrition, hormones, digestion, stress, and nervous system regulation. And we create space for patients to share things they may never have felt comfortable sharing before.

But time alone isn’t the value. An appointment is an encounter. What matters is what we do with everything we learn.

As naturopathic physicians, we’re trained to recognize patterns, understand the relationships between systems, and use the Therapeutic Order to guide care.

We consider what may be obstructing healing, what foundations need restoring, and which interventions make sense, in what sequence, for this particular person.

That clinical reasoning becomes a roadmap. Not simply a list of supplements or tests, but a thoughtful, evolving plan that helps someone move from managing symptoms toward meaningful, lasting change.

That is the transformation we’re working toward.

And delivering it well requires both clinical skill and a sustainable business. Meghan has devoted much of her work to helping practitioners build the infrastructure to offer that kind of care without burning out.

We also talked about what she calls “the line of fine.” You can have labs in range, be told you’re stable, and still know you don’t feel well.

I believe naturopathic medicine has an important role alongside conventional care in helping people move beyond that line, toward greater vitality and agency in their health.

⚡️ Coming soon: Episode 75 of The Vital Spirit Podcast with @drmeghanwalker

Why Being “Fine” Isn’t the Same as Being Healthy. ⚡️

#NaturopathicMedicine

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✨Feeling disconnected from your body?

We spend so much of our lives thinking about our bodies rather than experiencing what it feels like to live within them.

We analyze symptoms, evaluate emotions, monitor progress, and search for explanations. As a naturopathic physician, I believe deeply in understanding physiology and investigating the underlying causes of illness.

I also believe healing requires us to develop a relationship with the body we’re working so hard to understand.

I’ve been revisiting Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-Awareness by Alan Fogel, PhD, and was struck by how closely his work aligns with what I teach in my practice.

Fogel describes eight principles for restoring embodied self-awareness, beginning with finding resources that help us feel supported, slowing down, and remaining present with our sensations and emotions.

Embodiment extends far beyond noticing sensations.

It involves recognizing when we need support, experiencing ourselves in relationship with others, developing a clearer sense of our boundaries, and bringing that awareness into how we live, connect, and make choices.

There’s also fascinating physiology behind interoception, our ability to sense the internal condition of the body.

Our thinking mind can generate interpretations almost instantaneously. Awareness of subtle bodily sensations often requires a different pace, allowing us to remain with an experience before assigning it meaning.

Our mind wants an answer. Our body needs more time.

This is part of why I created Episode 74 of The Vital Spirit Podcast.

I wanted to offer you an opportunity to experience embodied self-awareness rather than simply learn about it.

Through a guided meditation, we explore interoception, the felt sense, inner knowing, and awareness beneath our constant mental commentary.

Your body is more than something to analyze. It’s somewhere to live. 🫶

🎧 COMMENT MEDITATION and I’ll send you the full guided practice from Episode 74 of The Vital Spirit Podcast.⚡️

Save this carousel to revisit these eight principles.✨

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