The Vital Spirit Podcast with Dr. Kelly Livingston

If you've ever wondered why your neck is always tight, why your jaw won't unclench, or why your body feels stuck even when your lab work looks normal, this episode offers a different way of seeing what's happening. I continue the fascia conversation by moving beyond anatomy into real clinical practice, explaining how fascia reflects the body's adaptations to stress, trauma, and chronic nervous sys...

What if the system connecting your muscles, organs, hormones, nervous system, and even your emotional health has been overlooked all along? In this first part of a two-part series, I introduce fascia through a completely different lens. While it's often described as connective tissue, fascia is far more than that. It's a living, responsive network that helps your body communicate, adapt, and heal....

Your body is always communicating with you. The real question is: are you listening? In this episode of The Vital Spirit Podcast, I sit down with Dr. Sheena Jongeneel, licensed acupuncturist, founder of Empress, and practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine, to explore women's hormones through a different lens—one rooted in patterns, vitality, and the body's innate wisdom. We talk about the con...

Grief doesn't just live in your mind. It lives in your body, too. In part two of this series, I move beyond the physiology of grief and into the healing process itself. We explore how grief shapes fascia, nervous system patterns, hormones, and even our sense of safety—and why healing isn't about "moving on," but about creating the conditions for your body to reorganize after loss. I share the herb...

Grief isn’t just something we feel emotionally—it changes us physically, too. In this episode, I take a deeper look at what happens inside the body when grief, loss, and major life transitions don’t fully move through our system. Building on my recent conversation with Dr. Mark Romano, we explore how grief affects the nervous system, cortisol rhythm, inflammation, gut health, and hormone balance,...

What if grief doesn’t just live in the mind but in the body too? In this episode of The Vital Spirit Podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Mark Romano, ND for a deeply thoughtful conversation on grief, healing, the nervous system, and what it means to feel at home in your body again. We explore how loss and transition can live in the body long after the moment has passed, how tension and symptoms can become...

Perimenopause has a way of bringing everything to the surface. What once felt manageable can suddenly feel louder. Sleep shifts. Anxiety rises. Your cycle changes. Your nervous system feels more reactive. And many women find themselves saying, “I don’t feel like myself anymore.” In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I continue our deep dive into homeopathy and perimenopause by moving from t...

Homeopathy begins with one radical idea: the body is communicating. In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I begin a long-awaited conversation about homeopathy—what it actually is, why it’s so misunderstood, and why I believe it’s one of the most important and underappreciated tools in perimenopause and menopause. In this first part of the series, I lay the foundation for understanding homeo...

What if your seasonal allergies aren’t random and your body isn’t just “overreacting”? In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I walk you through a completely different way of understanding seasonal allergies—one that goes beyond pollen counts and antihistamines and looks at your terrain, your immune system, your nervous system, your gut health, and your body’s overall ability to tolerate the...

What do you do when your symptoms actually get worse? In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I walk you through what to do when an acute illness is fully underway—when the fever rises, your energy drops, and your body clearly commits to fighting something. This is the phase where most people panic. But what if nothing has gone wrong? What if your body is doing exactly what it’s supposed to d...

What would you do if you got sick tomorrow and you didn’t have access to medication? In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I want to shift the way you think about getting sick—and more importantly, how you respond to it. Because for most people, the instinct is to stop symptoms as quickly as possible. But what if your symptoms aren’t the problem? What if they’re part of the solution? This i...

Healing doesn’t just happen in a doctor’s office—it happens in your daily life. In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I start bringing this work into real life and show you what it actually looks like to care for your body at home. If you’ve been following along, you might already be seeing your health differently. You understand your symptoms aren’t random. But now the question becomes: ho...

Your body already knows how to heal. The problem is how often we interrupt it. In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I walk you through what it actually means to start healing at home—not just understanding your body, but knowing how to respond to it in real time. I break down how healing doesn’t happen in theory—it happens in your daily life. From how you eat, sleep, and move, to how you r...

Your body already knows how to heal. The problem is how often we interrupt it. In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I bring together everything we’ve been exploring in the awakening series and take it one step further into what actually drives healing. This is where we move beyond awareness and into relationship. Specifically, your relationship with your body’s healing intelligence. I intr...

What if the reason you keep dealing with the same symptoms… is because the same patterns are still running in the background? In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I shift the conversation from awakening to integration—what actually happens after you realize your symptoms aren’t random. This is where healing becomes more than protocols, labs, or supplements. It becomes about self-knowledge....

What if the biggest obstacle to your healing isn’t your symptoms but the way you’ve been taught to think about them? In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I go deeper into the concept of a health awakening—this time focusing on the part that often gets missed: deprogramming. This is where healing shifts from just protocols and supplements into something much deeper. It’s about unlearning th...

What if your symptoms aren’t a problem to fix…but a message trying to wake you up? In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I’m opening up a deeper conversation about what I call a health awakening—the moment you start realizing that everything you’ve been taught about your body, your symptoms, and your healing might be incomplete. This isn’t about “love and light” or bypassing what you’re fee...

Did you know that vitamin D isn’t really a vitamin at all; and the real issue isn’t how much you supplement, but how much light your body receives? In this episode of the Vital Spirit Podcast, I explore the deeper physiology of vitamin D and why thinking of it as just another nutrient misses the bigger picture. Vitamin D functions as a hormone that communicates information about light, safety, sea...

Morning sunlight is not optional. In this episode, I break down why sunlight is one of the most powerful upstream regulators of human physiology we have. This isn’t biohacking nor a trend. It’s remembering something ancient and foundational to how we’re built. We talk circadian rhythm, cortisol, serotonin, appetite, metabolism, mitochondria, mood, and nervous system safety—and why so many modern h...

IBD is not just a diagnosis. It’s a pattern. And if we don’t understand the order in which healing needs to happen, we can unintentionally make things worse. In this second part of the IBD Master Series, I step into the clinical side of care. We talk about labs, but we don’t reduce healing to numbers. I walk you through how I actually approach inflammatory bowel disease in practice—the sequence, t...

Inflammatory Bowel Disease is not rare. It’s not mysterious. And it’s not just “autoimmune.” In this first part of the IBD Master Series, I expand the lens beyond conventional conversations and walk you through how I understand IBD as a whole-terrain condition—one that involves the gut, immune system, nervous system, hormones, microbiome, and life context. This episode lays the groundwork. In Part...

What if your gut symptoms aren’t random, confusing, or “all in your head” but a story your body has been trying to tell for years? In this episode of The Vital Spirit Podcast, I take you inside my clinical thinking as a naturopathic physician and walk you through how I differentiate IBS and IBD in real life, not just on paper. This is a case-based, detective-style episode where we look at gut infl...

When people hear IBS, they’re often told it’s “just stress,” “just food,” or worse—all in their head. In this episode, I slow things down and walk you through IBS as what it truly is: a gut–brain axis pattern, rooted in nervous system regulation, physiology, lived experience, and meaning. In this episode, we cover: 01:03 Understanding IBS through the gut–brain axis 02:28 Why a holistic approach ac...

What if your mood, digestion, stress response, and inflammation aren’t separate problems but expressions of the same conversation happening inside your body? In Part 2 of the Gut–Brain Axis series on The Vital Spirit Podcast, I move out of theory and into real clinical life. We talk about what the gut–brain axis actually looks like in practice—especially for women navigating IBS, IBD, and the ampl...

The gut–brain axis explains something most mental health models miss. In this episode of The Vital Spirit Podcast , I begin a two-part essential series on the gut–brain axis — the communication network between the gut, brain, immune system, hormones, and metabolism that shapes mood, stress resilience, and inflammation. In Part 1, we explore why mood symptoms — including depression — often emerge d...