Why Vitalism Matters: Reframing Pain, Symptoms, and Self-Healing with Dr’s Keiko and Sera
Release Date: 10/01/2025
Why Plants Change How You Think and Feel with Spiritual Herbalist Tracy James
The Vitalist
What if your body already knows how to communicate with plants? In this episode of The Vitalist, Dr. Sera sits down with spiritual herbalist Tracy James to explore the living intelligence of plants, the five elements, and our innate ability to reconnect with nature as a source of healing, regulation, and wisdom. We dive into how the earth, water, fire, air, and ether elements shape the way plants communicate through the body, emotions, mind, and spirit. Tracy shares her journey into plant communication, her time learning from Shipibo shamans in Peru, and how practices like plant bathing,...
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What’s Really in Your Wine? Regenerative Farming, Biodynamics & the Intelligence of Nature with Alice Anderson
The Vitalist
What if wine could be more than a beverage? What if it was a living expression of soil health, intuition, and care? In this episode of The Vitalist, Dr. Keiko sits down with Alice Anderson, founder and winemaker of Amevive, to explore the intersection of regenerative agriculture, biodynamic farming, and embodied winemaking. Alice shares her journey from growing up around wine labels to falling in love with animals, farming, and the intelligence of land, eventually founding Amevive in 2019 with a commitment to growing and producing wine that feels as good in the body as it tastes. Together,...
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Why Symptoms Come Last: How Acupuncture Reveals the Body’s Innate Intelligence with Dr. Alan Chang
The Vitalist
In this episode of The Vitalist, Dr. Sera sits down with Dr. Alan Chang to discuss how acupuncture really works. Drawing from Chinese medicine, embryology, and decades of clinical experience, Dr. Alan shares how the body organizes itself long before symptoms appear. Together, they explore the meridian system as an energetic landscape, the five elements as living relationships within the body, and how modern metaphors like cellphones can help us understand invisible pathways of information and energy. This conversation also moves into the emotional terrain of healing, unpacking how stress and...
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Beyond Fight-or-Flight: A Full Nervous System Map for Modern Stress with Gabriel Kram
The Vitalist
Your nervous system is always working in the background, shaping your perceptions, your mood, your reactions, and even your chronic symptoms. Yet most of us were never taught how it actually works. In this episode of The Vitalist, Dr. Sera talks with author and autonomic expert Gabriel Kram about the real biology behind stress and human behavior. Together they break down why the nervous system, not just the brain, drives your moment-to-moment experience, and how its early wiring determines what feels safe, overwhelming, or threatening. They explore the map to your nervous system: Connection,...
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Cracked Open: How Yoga Reveals Who You Really Are with Jenn Chiarelli
The Vitalist
In this episode of The Vitalist, Dr. Keiko sits down with yoga and spiritual teacher Jenn Chiarelli to explore the quiet intelligence that lives in the body. Jenn shares her early years as a professional ballerina and the moment yoga cracked something open in her, shifting her from perfection to presence. She reflects on the practices that helped her reconnect to her essence: breathwork, subtle movement, mantra, meditation, and the lifelong inquiry that continues to guide her: Who am I? Together, Dr. Keiko and Jenn explore what it means to soften, to listen, and to trust the messages that...
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Prolapse, Pee Leaks & Core Weakness: The Truth About Your Pelvic Floor with Dr. Jocelyn Connolly
The Vitalist
This week on The Vitalist, I sat down with Dr. Jocelyn Connolly, Co-founder of The Vagina Doc to talk about the part of our body we’ve been taught to whisper about, ignore, and tighten. The pelvis is a place where we hold our stories, our stress, our pleasure, our fear… and our power. Dr. Jocelyn is bold, brilliant, and refreshingly honest about pelvic health and she’s on a mission to help women understand that their pelvic floor is not meant to be “tight.” It’s meant to be responsive, alive, and in relationship with your breath. In this conversation, she shares the moment...
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Inside the Intelligence of the Body: What Fascia and Embryology Reveal with Rev. Dr. Joanne Avison
The Vitalist
In this episode, Dr. Sera sits down with Rev. Doctor Joanne Avison, author, body worker and fascia whisperer, to explore the living architecture of the human body. They discuss what happens when we move from seeing the body as parts to understanding the body as as a continuous network that communicates through light, sound, and movement. Joanne shares how embryology reveals the intelligence guiding our development, and why fascia is the substrate of our becoming. Together, they dive into the hidden continuity between the heart and tongue, what it really means to “speak from the...
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Ayurveda Made Simple: Discover Your Dosha and Unlock the Science of Life with Dr. Meghana Thanki
The Vitalist
In this episode of The Vitalist Podcast, Dr. Keiko sits down with Dr. Meghana Thanki, an Ayurvedic and naturopathic doctor, to explore the deep intelligence of Ayurveda, the original science of life. Together they unpack what it truly means to live in alignment with nature’s rhythms and the body’s innate wisdom. Dr. Thanki shares how she was called to Ayurveda while studying naturopathic medicine, and how the sister sciences of yoga and Ayurveda form a complete lifestyle system for healing. You’ll learn about ojas (vital life force), the three doshas (Vata, Pitta, Kapha), and how...
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Beyond 20/20 Vision: How Your Eyes Can Rewire Your Brain with Dr. Dana Dean
The Vitalist
We’ve been using our eyes all wrong. In this eye-opening conversation, Functional Optometrist Dr. Dana Dean reveals why seeing clearly has nothing to do with 20/20 vision and everything to do with how our brain and eyes communicate to create vision. After struggling through school and repeatedly failing her board exams, Dr. Dana discovered that what she was seeing wasn’t translating to her brain. Once she retrained her vision, everything changed. Now, after 25 years in behavioral and developmental optometry, she’s helping others do the same. We explore how vision is learned, and 75% of...
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How to Think Differently: Dr. Jeff Karp on ADHD, Curiosity, and the Science of Learning
The Vitalist
In this inspiring conversation, Dr. Jeff Karp, Harvard Medical School professor, MIT scientist, and bioinspired innovator shares the story behind his revolutionary approach to learning, creativity, and curiosity. From being told in second grade that he’d “never make it,” to leading a world-renowned biomedical lab, Jeff reveals how metacognition, thinking about how we think, became the foundation for his success. We explore how ADHD and neurodiversity can be superpowers, why true learning engages all the senses, and how curiosity can literally rewire the brain to foster connection and...
info_outlineMost of us were never taught that there’s an innate intelligence animating our bodies, a spark that builds us, heals us, and carries our stories. In this episode of The Vitalist Podcast, Keiko and Sera open up about their personal journeys from feeling broken and disconnected to discovering the life-changing philosophy of vitalism.
Through stories of conception, embryology, and their first chiropractic experiences, they reveal how vitalism reframes pain, symptoms, and even grief, not as problems to be fixed, but as intelligence speaking through the body. They share how adjustments can help release buried emotions, why kids are natural vitalists, and how cultures and indigenous tribes intuitively relate to nature’s wisdom in ways modern society has forgotten.
This conversation is a reminder that healing is less about fixing what’s “wrong” and more about reconnecting with what’s already right within us.
If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your body, struggled with symptoms that don’t make sense, or wondered if there’s something more to healing than quick fixes and protocols, this episode will expand your perspective and invite you into a heart-based way of living.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Why people don’t know how to embody innate intelligence and how vitalism makes it practical. (1:27)
The spark of life and why no one taught us this in school. (2:06)
From broken to whole: how the story of conception shifted the belief “I’m broken” into “I’m inherently whole.” (4:19)
Why studying embryology, and how one cell becomes 70 trillion, changes how you’ll see your body forever. (5:08)
How vitalism changes the way we adjust, connect, and see people beyond the physical body. (6:37)
How an adjustment helped Keiko release the buried longing for a mother. (8:20)
Why healing is less about fixing and more about unlearning cultural conditioning. (9:48)
Vitalism as a heart-based way of living: why it’s about experiencing life force, not just intellectualizing it. (13:11)
Holism vs. Vitalism: the crucial difference between “everything is connected” and “everything is bio-intelligent.” (14:49)
Kids as natural vitalists: curiosity, awe, and openness before culture puts us in boxes. (16:05)
Why Amazonian tribes call plants “she” and what it teaches us about relating to nature’s intelligence. (20:05)
Food as information: why food is more than calories. (26:43)
Reframing symptoms: shifting from “my body is punishing me” to “my body is communicating with me.” (29:06)
How we stopped burning out as chiropractors by realizing healing isn’t about “fixing.” (30:10)
Root cause redefined: why it’s not just the “root cause”, but the soil it grew in. (32:56)
EPISODES WE REFERENCED:
The Science of Flower Essences and What Nature Knows That We Don't with Katie Hess
The Most Counterintuitive Healing Advice You’ll Ever Hear with Wes Kress
Breath Is the Steering Wheel of Your Nervous System with Dr. Sachin Patel
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