Christian Natural Health

BRONWYN SCHWEIGERDT may be the most evocative psychotherapist you’ve ever heard. Instead of fixing peoples’ messes, her goal is to elicit feelings you’re most ashamed to have, such as hatred and betrayal. She knows that even though feelings are invisible, they don’t evaporate, but store away in our bodies when they’re disowned. Bronwyn has a masters degree in counseling, and another in nutrition. She is a public speaker, author, and licensed psychotherapist. Check out her podcast, Angry at the Right Things, here:  https://angryattherightthings.podbean.com/ Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Jason Carver is a pastor and the founder of Standing Supernaturally for Marriage Restoration ministry. He has served in various pastoral roles in the church for over 25 years and is also a Board Certified Christian Counselor. Jason's personal story of marital restoration is a prophetic picture of what God can do in anyone's life who is faithful to the promises of God. He currently coaches and teaches courses on how to supernaturally stand for marriage restoration. Jason lives in Waco, TX, with his wife Christine and daughters, Abby and Sydney. He also teaches tennis at Baylor University and produces an international TV ministry program. 40 Day Stand: A 40-Day Devotional Empowering You to Stand Supernaturally for Marriage Restoration is his first book. To learn more about Jason, see supernaturally.com or you can find his free gift of 40 days of prayers for your spouse at  supernaturally.com/gift Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

DR. MALAIKA WOODS is dually board certified with the American Board of ObesityMedicine and the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology. She is the founder of Dr. Woods Wellness, and the #1 best-selling author of “Physician Unleashed: The Physician Freedom Formula.” In addition to running her own independent practice, Dr. Woods also coaches other physicians and practitioners on starting and growing their independent practices. When not working in the office, Dr. Woods enjoys singing, especially gospel music. She has been a choir director throughout the years and a wedding singer for many of her family and friends. Spending time with her wonderfully supportive husband, daughter, son and close friends are her most treasured moments. Her secret ambition is to one day write a fictional book that gets turned into a block buster movie! To learn more about Dr Woods, you can find her on her free Facebook community, The Natural Hormone Fix, and/or you can download The Three Secrets to Hormone Balance Every Woman Should Know at drwoodswellness/guide Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Emma Tekstra is an actuary, independent health researcher and author of “How to Be a Healthy Human”. With a 30-year background in employee benefits and corporate health and wellbeing, she consults with employers looking for real solutions to runaway healthcare costs, and with startup companies bringing health solutions to market. To learn more about Emma, see EmmaTekstra.com/About or EmmaTekstra.Substack.com. You can get a copy of her book here. Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Alexandra Yu is an author and registered nurse with many years of experience in the clinical research industry. Her passion for holistic health led her to launch the Her Holistic Healing podcast. Alexandra’s mission is to encourage women to seek God’s wisdom first for their health and life so that they can experience true, lasting healing that will allow them to make a greater eternal impact in their homes and communities. Alexandra is a wife and mom of three children. She loves to read,work out, travel, and play the piano, and she has a passion for helping at-risk children. To learn more about Alexandra, see herholistichealing.com or you can find a copy of her book at herholistichealing.com/book Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

There is certainly a stereotype that natural healers of all sorts, including naturopathic doctors, acupuncturists, homeopaths, massage therapists, and etc are all a bit on the “woo-woo” side. When I first started practicing, friends would ask me (jokingly—mostly) whether they’d have to part a beaded curtain to get into my office, or whether they’d find it adorned with crystals. My husband still calls me a hippie, because I like yoga, and prefer to go barefoot whenever possible. I’m also a strong Christian, though, and many of my patients choose my practice because they want the non-pharmaceutical, “heal the root cause” focus, without all the New Age or Eastern religious stuff thrown in. But why are natural healing and alternative spiritual ideas so often entwined, anyway? The Vital Force, Electromagnetism, and Energy Medicine I think the reason these things go together has to do with the concept of the vital force—this nebulous concept of the thing that keeps an organism alive, maintains homeostasis, and heals when a disturbance occurs. Because this idea is so nebulous (or at least it has been historically), it’s often conflated with spirituality and the metaphysical. Most of my colleagues in naturopathic school were spiritual in some way or another; I’d say perhaps a third to half were Christian, and the rest identified with some other organized religion, or they had their own hodgepodge collection of spiritual beliefs. Everyone attributed the vital force to their own spiritual ideas, though—indeed, you couldn’t really be a naturopath and not believe in the vital force. It’s kind of fundamental to the whole philosophy (https://www.drlaurendeville.com/why-you-are-susceptible-to-illness/). I’m now starting to believe, though, that the vital force isn’t spiritual at all; it’s actually electromagnetism (more on this here: https://www.drlaurendeville.com/electromagnetism-vital-force/). I rather suspect the soul is the source of that power, but in much the same way that a piano player plays the keys, and music results. Our souls are the players, our bodies are the keys, and the music is the voltage that then enervates the body. This may seem like semantics—we’ve only removed the spiritual by one extra step—but to me, this changes how I think about energy medicine tremendously. For instance: acupuncture meridians turn out to be fascia, made of collagen and hydrated with crystalline water, acting as semiconductors of electrons on a tissue-based ‘wiring’ system (more on this here: https://www.drlaurendeville.com/electromagnetism-vital-force/). Homeopathy turns out to borrow from the near-infinite structural possibilities of liquid crystalline water (https://www.drlaurendeville.com/the-fourth-phase-of-water/), imprinting a structural memory upon it in the form of a fractal (https://www.drlaurendeville.com/homeopathy-but-isnt-there-nothing-in-it/). Since frequencies can be converted into fractals and vice versa (they’re called cymatic images, https://ask.audio/articles/how-sound-affects-you-cymatics-an-emerging-science), it’s not too far-fetched to say that homeopathy contains the imprint of the frequency of the original substance. That frequency can affect the frequency of our own cells via resonance—the same phenomenon that occurs when you strum a guitar string, and the same key on a different guitar will begin to vibrate, without ever being touched. On a piano, when you play a low C, the C notes at higher and lower octaves will resonate as well—but the other notes won’t, because the frequency is wrong. This is why, with homeopathy, you have to get the remedy (the frequency) correct, or nothing will happen: only the right frequency will cause your cells to resonate in harmony, and come into appropriate alignment. (By contrast, this is at least part of the reason why synthetic electromagnetic frequencies (https://www.drlaurendeville.com/emf-how-do-you-know-if-its-too-high/) can be so damaging: they can disrupt the delicate frequencies of our own cells, thus interfering with their function). Even auras turn out to have an entirely physical basis. Anyone who has ever been to Sedona has probably seen the Kirlian photography studios that offer to photograph your aura. It’s based on the corona discharge phenomenon, in which the photographic film is connected to a high energy power source, creating an electric field. When a person (or any other grounded object) touches it, those excited electrons have a direct route back to the ground, through that object. As they fall, they have to get rid of their extra energy, and they do so via light emission—essentially, this is the same idea as in Einstein’s photoelectric effec

Jodi Scholes is a celebrated author, educator, and Licensed Massage Therapist with over 30 years of experience in understanding and treating pain. Her work with elite athletes, including Major League Soccer team and U.S. Track & Field athletes, has taken her across the U.S. and internationally, providing high-level care and support. Her book, Body Blueprint: How Your Pain May Be Telling a Story, explores how a person's perception of pain is not solely influenced by biological factors but is also profoundly affected by mental and emotional stress. Jodi has shared her insights on a global stage, including delivering a TEDx talk titled "Body Blueprint: How Your Pain May Be Telling A Story.” She is a retired triathlete herself, and an improving tennis player. She continues to speak at retreats, teach weekly, and provide massage therapy, blending her extensive experience with her passion for holistic wellness. To learn more about Jodi, see jodischoles.com Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Mrs. Christy Stutzman is a small-business owner, a music composer and a former teacher and state legislator. She has written for multiple news organizations including The Washington Times, The Daily Signal and is a featured opinion writer for the Washington Stand by Family Research Council. As the wife of a member of Congress, she traveled widely on diplomatic delegations and has been a strong advocate for conservative, pro-family causes on Capitol Hill and in political campaigns for the past twenty years. She has been a featured radio and podcast guest, and a featured speaker at political, Christian, and pro-life events across the country. Her new book, The Spiritual Price of Political Silence, connects the dots of political apathy and the cultural decline of American values. Mrs. Stutzman resides on her farm in Howe, IN with her husband, Marlin, and their two sons, Payton and Preston. To learn more about Christy and to get a copy of her book, see booksbychristy.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Dr Tony Nalda holds a Doctorate of Chiropractic from Life University, and built one of the most successful chiropractic clinics in Central Florida. His expertise has made him a highly sought-after scoliosis specialist both in the U.S. and abroad. Dr. Nalda is CLEAR Institute’s Chairman of the Board—the only non-profit chiropractic educational and certification center devoted to non-surgical scoliosis treatment and research, a MaxLiving board member and instructor, and a keynote speaker who teaches chiropractors across the world. He has written several books, including “Scoliosis Hope: How New Approaches to Treatment are Transforming Lives.” He has successfully led his family practice for 20+ years and continues to seek out the latest and most effective modalities for treating patients naturally. To learn more about Dr Nalda, see scoliosisreductioncenter.com or you can find him on YouTube at Scoliosis Reduction Center Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

For years now, even as headlines about the development of AI have become more frequent and more dire, I really never worried about it much, because I couldn't think of anything in scripture that sounded a great deal like a superintelligent machine. I'd read the end of the book (Revelation), I knew how it ended, and it wasn't in a robot apocalypse... so all the fears surrounding that possibility must therefore be much ado about nothing. (I did write a fictional trilogy for young adults back in 2017 about how I imagined a near-miss robot apocalypse might look, though, because I found the topic fascinating enough to research at the time. It's called the "Uncanny Valley" trilogy, where the "uncanny valley" refers to the "creepy" factor, as a synthetic humanoid creature approaches human likeness.) When I finished the trilogy, I more or less forgot about advancing AI, until some of the later iterations of Chat GPT and similar Large Language Models (LLMs). Full disclosure: I've never used any LLMs myself, mostly because (last I checked) you had to create an account with your email address before you started asking it questions. (In the third book of my series, the superintelligent bot Jaguar kept track of everyone via facial recognition cameras, recording literally everything they did in enormous data processing centers across the globe that synced with one another many times per day. Though at that point I doubt it would make any difference, I'd rather not voluntarily give Jaguar's real-life analog any data on me if I can help it!) Particularly the recent release of Chat GPT Omni (which apparently stands for "omniscient" --!!) gave me pause, though, and I had to stop and ask myself why the idea that it could be approaching actual Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I recently read a book called "Deep Medicine" by Eric Topol on the integration of AI into the medical field, which helped allay some potential concerns--that book contended that AGI would likely never be realized, largely because AGI inherently requires experience in the real world, and a robot can never have lived experiences in the way that humans can. It painted a mostly rosy picture of narrow (specialized) AI engaging in pattern recognition (reading radiology images or recognizing pathology samples or dermatological lesions, for instance), and thus vastly improving diagnostic capabilities of physicians. Other uses might include parsing a given individual's years of medical records and offering a synopsis and recommendations, or consolidating PubMed studies, and offering relevant suggestions. Topol did not seem to think that the AI would ever replace the doctor, though. Rather, the author contended, at the rate that data is currently exploding, doctors are drowning in the attempt to document and to keep up with it all, and empathic patient care suffers as a result. AI, he argues, will actually give the doctor time to spend with the patient again, to make judgment calls with a summary of all the data at his fingertips, and to put it together in an integrated whole with his uniquely human common sense. Synthetic Empathy and Emotions? But, "Deep Medicine" was written in 2019, which (in the world of AI) is already potentially obsolete. I'm told that Chat GPT Omni is better than most humans at anything involving either logic or creativity, and it does a terrific approximation of empathy, too. Even "Deep Medicine" cited statistics to suggest that most humans would prefer a machine for a therapist than a person (!!), largely due to the fear that the human might judge them for some of their most secret or shameful thoughts or feelings. And if the machine makes you feel like it understands you, does it really matter whether its empathy is "real" or not? What does "real" empathy mean, anyway? In "Uncanny Valley," my main character, as a teenager, inherited a "companion bot" who was programmed with mirror neurons (the seat of empathy in the human brain.) In the wake of her father's death, she came to regard her companion bot as her best friend. It was only as she got older that she started to ask questions like whether its 'love' for her was genuine, if it was programmed. This is essentially the theological argument for free will, too. Could God have made a world without sin? Sure, but in order to do it, we'd all have to be automatons--programmed to do His will, programmed to love Him and to love one another. Would there be any value in the love of a creature who could not do anything else? (The Calvinists might say that's the way the world actually is, for those who are predestined, but everyone else would vehemently disagree.) It certainly seems that God thought it was worth all the misery He endured since creation, for the chance that some of us might freely choose Him. I daresay that same logic is self-evident to al