VagusFest launched in spring 2024, and Dr. Kelly Livingston took the concept and ran with it, creating a sucessful event that engaged her local community members. Dr. Livingston joins this podcast episode to share her experience applying James Maskell’s VagusFest model in Darien, Connecticut.
The VagusFest model enables local practitioners to host local community events that demonstrate to local attendees the power of vagal toning, and indirectly, the benefits of lifestyle, functional, or integrative medicine. Functioning as a promotional event for local clinics, VagusFest addresses a public relations issue for functional medicine, which is that the general perception that patients must invest significant time into their health journey before seeing results. VagusFest hosts can showcase how their approach to medicine offers immediate benefits through direct experience at the event.
Download and listen to the episode to hear more about:
- Reasons for practitioners to prioritize nervous system regulation in their practices.
- Dr. Livingston’s favorite resources on vagal toning, including books by Deb Dana and Stanley Rosenberg.
- Challenges and successes of previous VagusFest events.
- The value of group medicine and community engagement.
https://www.rootsdeepmedicine.com/about-us
James Maskell:
Hello and welcome to the podcast. This week we are talking with Dr. Kelly Livingston. She is a naturopathic doctor and vagus nerve enthusiast from Connecticut. She was the guinea pig for the first ever VagusFest test run that happened in May. In this podcast, we are going to talk about what happened at her Vegas Fest and what has happened to the last three VagusFests at IFM, in Austin, and at Freedom Practice Coaching’s Conference to actually make the whole thing 10 times better than it was the last time we did this podcast. I’m super excited to get in it with you.
If you want to learn more about VagusFest, please feel free to get in touch. We’ll have all the details on how you can run a VagusFest in your community. This podcast is brought to you by Pulsetto. Pulsetto is one of the leaders in the vagus nerve revolution. They have a vagus nerve stimulator that is extremely easy to use, and you only have to pay for it once, and you can use it forever. It’s really good for things like pain and sleep. My wife’s been using it.I’ve got one at home, I’ve been using it. I think it’s a really simple way, and I think that if you try it, you’ll realize what a big impact this could have on your patient programs as well. So if you go to goevomed.com/Pulsetto, you can order your first one. And then if you like it, you can order wholesale much like you would do with supplements. So that’s goevomed.com/Pulsetto. Let us know if you have any questions.
A warm welcome to the podcast for the first time, Dr. Kelly Livingston. Welcome, Doc.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
James Maskell:
Well, I’m really excited to connect because you did something that was really dramatic and valuable for me, which is that when we put the first podcast about my concept for VagusFest, you wrote back and said, “I’m in. What do we have to do? Let’s do this.” And let’s start off with why? Why is this meaningful for you?
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah, so it’s really meaningful to me and the way that I practice naturopathic medicine with my patients. I’ve been a practicing physician over the last 11 years and throughout the years, certainly the way that I practice has evolved and it became very apparent to me that most human beings walking in my door were somewhat dysregulated in their nervous system state in some way, and it was impacting their ability to heal. So I went down the rabbit hole of the vagus nerve and what were some things that patients could be doing at home that were simple enough that they were going to do them, but also profound enough that it would shift their nervous system state into a healing state. And so it was something that I was very familiar with. It’s something that I’m working on every day with patients. And so when I saw that you were offering a platform to discuss doing this in a group setting and getting more of that community involvement, having it be fun I just, without you even asking any questions, I said, “I want to participate in that.”
James Maskell:
Amazing. Well, thank you for putting your hand up and being part of it, and that led me to come to Connecticut in May and check it out. I guess before we go there and talk about the event, because I do want to get into what happened and talk about actually the four VagusFests that we’ve done. Can you just give the audience, you are very well learned in this area. And I’d just love for you to share some of the favorite resources that you’ve gone to over the years, some of your favorite teachers, some of your favorite books, because it’s not obvious to get into nervous system healing for functional medicine, naturopathic medicine, lifestyle medicine. But I could tell from our conversations initially that this is something that wasn’t new to you.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah. For sure. It’s really hard to narrow it down, but I’ll keep it more specific to the vagus nerve. So as I was going down that rabbit hole of how do I explain to patients, number one, what the nervous system is, and then number two, what a healing state means, sympathetic versus parasympathetic? I ended up doing some training through something called the Safe and Sound Protocol, and I learned all of Steven Porges work. So, anything really written by him, communicated by him certainly influenced my perspective, the entire polyvagal theory and how that communicating that sometimes was an aha moment to patients around just what state their nervous system was in. So he’s a great resource in my training with the Unyte ILS, the Safe and Sound Protocol was wonderful. I also have background in HeartMath for trauma. So throughout that training we’re also learning more about the nervous system and how the vagus nerve is either enhancing or adding to your healing state or potentially taking away from your ability to get into that healing state.
So some further I would say Deb Dana would be a great resource certainly in translating the polyvagal theory. She has a wonderful book that has some exercises and really wonderful simple at home tools and techniques. So I refer patients to her lot. And then there’s a great book by Stanley Rosenberg, I think it’s called The Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve. He’s a craniosacral therapist, so that’s been a great resource as well. Those would be probably some of my top places I’ll send patients immediately to, to start to understand this world and the language and how it impacts them and their healing process.
James Maskell:
Beautiful. Well, look, let’s jump into our relationship. So we started communicating as soon as I got your message, and I was looking for a place to try this before the IFM Las Vegas. And so we started connecting, and ultimately my idea at the very beginning was how do we just create a structure, a repeatable structure where people could give their community opportunities to use some of these tools and give them the gift of regulating their nervous system? And I think one of the things that I appreciated about our journey before we did the event was I guess really thinking about how do you take the best of the best? What really moves the needle as opposed to all the things you could do, what are the things that really move the needle?
And then also how could you think about combining some of those different areas? And I think one of the things that I really appreciated about you is that we radically simplified the quiz. The version one that I had of the quiz that I had put together with Dr. Navas Habib was quite, I would say, heady. And it took a minute to get it down into something that could be really easy for people to take the key learnings away, but without being confused with overcomplicated jargon.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah, for sure. I think when you’re communicating to patients, or for me anyway, I’m trying to take these complex physiological processes, biochemical processes, psychological processes, and then explain to them what does that mean in simple terms? And then what does that mean for you and your experience on a daily basis? So I think taking some of those more technical questions and deciding, okay, what’s the big picture take home here that we’d like for these participants to understand? And then how can we also get them to interact through that question a little bit and maybe think about their daily life, think about their nervous system, and then understand the physiology almost working backward in that way a little bit.
James Maskell:
Yeah. Well look, when we came up with this, this was just a few things on paper, but now if you’re listening to this, you can actually see what this looks like because there’s a video in the show notes of a promo video for VagusFest with footage from Las Vegas at the IFM event, but also two events that we did with the Austin Functional Forum group in a park, which I think is its natural home, outdoors in the park, and then also in San Antonio at a conference. So you can actually see a lot more of what it looks like, and maybe that’ll be helpful for people. But yeah, let’s go back to that. I arrive in New York. I used to live in New York, so I know it pretty well. And I actually used to live in Connecticut too, so I know about that drive.
I let the side down early, I have to admit to everyone here in that I thought it would take an hour and a half for me to get up to your part of Connecticut from New York and ended up taking three hours because I totally misjudged the traffic and ended up showing up rather than two hours before the event, which I expected literally as the event was starting, which means that we didn’t have an opportunity to talk. We didn’t have an opportunity to connect. And also simultaneously it was May in Connecticut. And so the best laid plans of being in a beautiful park in row eight in Connecticut were moved to an indoor location. So tell us a little bit about how you kept your own nervous system regulated with those challenges.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
So it was, yep, pouring rain, little change of plans. Never done this before. We hadn’t met in person, so I was very grateful in that moment for my personal yoga and breath-work practice that I’ve cultivated over a long period of time. And I do have a practice daily, so I’m a little bit biased when I recommend some breath work or yoga to patients. But I really do credit that with me being able to stay regulated and think on my toes, it certainly increased what I call my window of tolerance or my threshold throughout the years to not be in that reactive state, but more in that receptive, socially engaged processing thought state. So I’d credit that.
Also, I will say that I really do in a big sense practice what I preach, where in that moment I remember just pausing, stepping back, and taking that deep breath. And that essentially is one of the most profound things I think about vagal toning, is that just a long, slow exhale and using your diaphragm to breathe is all you need to do to get started and to feel that benefit fairly immediately. So I would credit my breath work with maintaining regulation in that moment and a sense of humor around it too. It was like, of course.
James Maskell:
Well, it was a passive-aggressive version of making sure that you practice what you preach for me by taking three hours in the car.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
The universe is like, let’s really see how you can handle this. Yeah.
James Maskell:
Well, let me ask you this. So you’re doing it, you’re stepping in front of patients and doing it. What did you feel worked really well and what did you feel were things that could do with improvement?
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah, that’s a great question. We had talked a little bit afterward about how I think what worked well was, obviously it would’ve been better out in nature where your parasympathetic nervous system’s already being healed just by nature. But being inside, I think what worked well was getting people just comfortable with one another, saying hello, introducing people as they came in. And then we did have everyone sitting versus breaking off into groups around a park, which I do think is ideal, but just really getting everyone to engage a little bit. And then mentioning, as I was doing a little bit of the intro while we were waiting for you to do the quiz, just mentioning that sometimes it doesn’t feel so safe to be socially engaged, and that’s part of what we’re doing, just mentioning that it might feel a little bit uncomfortable.
And then easing in, through the practices, easing in through just a simple breath work practice, which most anyone can do and most people feel comfortable doing. And then working our way up to more of the, we did the Peter Levine Voo Foghorn breath, we did some laughter. We got a little bit more silly, a little more physical with the yoga movement. So I think just easing our way into feeling safe and engaged and able to co-regulate I think was really important.
James Maskell:
Yeah. Well, you did an amazing job of presenting, and I want to just share the two things that were the most impactful for me. The one thing that has stuck with me every moment since we did this was the woman who was there during the laughter session. The way that the VagusFest is set up is that you have an opportunity to experience the station and then you have an opportunity to share your experience with the other group. And during the laughter station, she shared that, she said for the last few years she had been actively trying to find ways to make herself laugh through external stimulus, so looking for funny things, looking for shows and podcasts and whatever, because she realized that she wanted to access more joy in her life and she wanted to laugh, and she knew that that was important. And through this process, this five minute process realized that she could do that at any time just by laughing.
And that was a deer in the headlights moment for me where I was like, wow, this is really impactful. If that happens to one person at one event, what if you could give hundreds of people that experience at a time and hundreds of practitioners could be giving people that experience at a time all over? That was very exciting for me because it was like, here’s a real impact that we’ve had on this woman right now and her life will never be the same as a result. So that was really impactful for me and I really enjoyed it. And then the other thing that was really impactful for me, and this actually started from our first conversation way before we did the first event, was how easily you were able to create connections in the community with other like-minded practitioners and what that might mean for your business.
Maybe you wanted to share a little bit about who else you got involved? A little bit about the yoga studio connection, because I really feel like the big part of this is I wanted to create something where it was easy for, let’s say a functional medicine lead. And when I say functional medicine, it could be naturopathic doctor, it could be someone trained in functional medicine, but someone who’s in the business of quarterbacking someone’s chronic disease reversal to actually connect with other practitioners who can play a role like a yoga teacher but aren’t going to deliver the whole package. And that way we could create real connection and cohesion in community with the kind of people that are going to aid people in their journey home. So how did you think about that? How did you choose the people to get involved and what was your experience of their involvement?
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah, I just really quickly want to comment on the joy comment also because I do think that that was really profound. And basically what she’s communicating is that she was in that ventral vagal, safe, engaged state. So she was able to feel that joy and laughter. And one of the women who I had participating, my friend who’s an acupuncturist, which I’ll explain how I reached out to her in just a second, she really was able to show us that we can cultivate that internally. We were just laughing. We weren’t laughing at anything. We were laughing and creating that joy within us. And so I thought that was a really wonderful comment. I really appreciated her being open and vulnerable with that, and it was wonderful to hear.
And so reaching out to community, as I mentioned, I do practice yoga, so I have a built-in community there of not only yoga studio owners, but teachers and other yogis who I do feel confident I can reach out to really around anything that I do as far as my holistic medicine practice because they’re going to understand at least the nervous system and breath work and getting into that parasympathetic state. So that to me is always an obvious person to reach out to. In particular, I had a friend of mine participate who I’ve done yoga retreats with. I selected her because in particular, I think her nervous system is quite regulated. And so when she’s running a session or speaking with other participants, I think that she has that ability to ground and co-regulate their nervous system in a way that just feels safe and comfortable. And that is important to me versus maybe someone who’s a little bit more erratic in their energy and they might not be regulating as much. So that was part of that decision process.
I think as a holistic practitioner, it’s important that we do cultivate relationships with other practitioners who might fill a piece of the puzzle for our patients. And so I do always have a fairly close-knit group of acupuncturists I’ll refer to, chiropractors. Sometimes I’ll work with nutritionists, certainly therapists, and finding people who understand that somatic piece so we’re not just top down, but we’re also looking bottom up, which again is a big role of the vagus nerve. So those were some of the thoughts that I had in who I was reaching out to and who I was asking to participate. Another chiropractor friend was in attendance. So I think just reaching out to other healers in the community that maybe don’t do the exact same thing as you, but have a similar perspective and who desire to cultivate that community engagement. So there certainly are a few local to me who have expressed interest in the group program I run, or really just having that sense of community, like-minded individuals with a common goal.
James Maskell:
Awesome. Well, just to follow up on that thread, part of the goal of VagusFest is that those practitioners that step up to lead them in their community will be giving a gift out to the community in teaching them how to regulate the nervous system. And that gift will end up coming back to them in terms of successful practice growth. And so when I heard that you were going to bring in a yoga teacher who was a friend who had nine locations for her business, it was the perfect example for me or that you had those connections that this is a version of, what would you say? Presidential marketing, going out into the community with partners and really making an impact, and then obviously positioning yourself as the go-to person in the community when chronic illness comes up.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah. That yoga studio actually didn’t end up participating, but we’re all enmeshed here where I know many, many yoga studios. And I think that is the key. It’s as your journey as a functional medicine provider or naturopath, any holistic healer is cultivating those strong relationships and that does build that community.
James Maskell:
Well look, Dr. Navas Habib who started this journey actually by convincing me to do a podcast on the vagus nerve early this year, he convinced me basically that the vagus nerve is the organ of unity. And I would love for you to comment on that assertion.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah. I would agree in a lot of ways. And so if we’re even just thinking about within our body, the vagus nerve being that direct gut-brain connection, and I’m such a gut brain practitioner, it’s where I start everyone. It’s step one of any healing journey. I think it is the nerve of unity in that sense. It’s also unity in the sense of just all the communication that’s going on from our organs up to the brain and then from our brain down. And then I would say unity as far as our engagement outside of ourselves, again, with those other systems. And not to go too deep into the polyvagal theory, but when you are in that ventral vagal, that socially engaged state, you are making others feel comfortable to be in that state as well, whether it’s your facial expressions, your tone of voice, again, just the fact that you are regulated. So that to me is unifying when we’re isolated or lonely or in more of a dorsal maybe shut down or more sympathetic fight or flight, we’re not unified. That doesn’t feel safe for us.
So I would absolutely agree with that statement. It’s a, I think a great way of looking at it both within the body and then how we’re engaging with our external environment. You and I had talked a little bit about how the nervous system is the lens through which you experience the world. It’s the flavor or the color of glasses you’re wearing that day, and that is a big aha moment for some patients who’ve never really thought about it that way. They think, oh, it’s my hormones, or, oh, it’s my anxiety, or there’s something wrong with me. And that’s not necessarily the case. And maybe you haven’t felt that sense of unity with others or connection or healing among others because you’re in more of a dysregulated state. So again, just doing a simple practice to start to know what it feels like to be regulated can really impact the way that you not only see the world, but what you’re getting back as well.
James Maskell:
Yeah, beautiful. And all of those things are true, and your ability to create synergy with a chiropractor and acupuncturist, a yoga teacher or someone who’s trained in lifestyle medicine is aligned because we’re all interested in creating healthy vagus tone and vagal tone, so there’s unity there as well. And that’s what I’ve always wanted from these groups. That was the beginning of the Functional Forum, was really creating unity amongst practitioners who were practicing in a health-focused way so that we could really have an impact on healthcare by working together. And so this gives me a lot of hope that that is possible at a local level.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah.
James Maskell:
Awesome. Well, what I want to do now is I want to just share with you and get your feedback on some of the things that happened in the next three VagusFest, because that was the first one, that was mid-May. Then on the 29th of May, we did the first official VagusFest for practitioners. And that one you did was for patients and for the community, which is where this is headed. But also we’re going to be doing this at conferences over the next few years because ultimately we want to engage practitioners into becoming like you and saying, yes, I could do this in my community. So that started in IFM, and ultimately it was the pre-party, which we’ve done for years at the IFM conference. And yeah, there was a lot that we learned there. First of all, the Bellagio is not the natural home of the VagusFest even though—
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Probably not.
James Maskell:
…even though you do need to regulate your nervous system to survive in Vegas for five days, and I think a lot of people appreciated that, it’s not a natural fit, but there was a lot to love about it. First of all, Dr. Navas Habib and Dr. Carla Melanbek and Dr. Mark Tager all came and participated and added a lot of value to it in that way. So I’m really appreciative of them. Things that I learned along the way, and I say this with the greatest respect to all three of them who are experts in this area, it’s actually, you don’t need to be an expert to do this. And it was funny that the one station that kept within time and worked well consistently was the one that wasn’t run by the expert, which actually was by my wife because the guy who was meant to be doing it, his plane was late.
So my wife Rachel stepped in and she did the breath work one and it was great. Some of the things that we did there that worked, I think we really discovered how to bring together what previously I thought were two different stations into one station. So, the Voo breath that you brought allowed us to then have one station that was breathwork and Vooing, which was bringing together essentially the humming station and the breathwork station into one. And I think that worked really well. I think this was the first time actually that we had the structure that I had imagined where people were in small groups, they were doing things for six minutes and then having three minutes to integrate the experience by sharing what they had felt. And that was really valuable, and I could see people really lighting up. I think by combining the laughter and the movement into one that Carla Melanbek did that was really valuable.
And I saw people that you could see the joy in their faces in the videos that we’ve created from just having that moment to be enjoy and be connected. So that was really valuable. And in the model that we had, because essentially it’s a dinner event, it’s always been a food-based event. We had people sit in their groups when they had gone through the four stations. And what was amazing is that I finished at 9:30, because I went in the last group, because we had 10 groups go through every 10 minutes, and people were still there an hour later after their group had finished talking about it. And that’s the way I’d set it up. But to go back in and see people really engaging on this topic was extremely interesting, extremely valuable, and was just very heartfelt.
The things that I think didn’t work, now that we’ve done it a few times, it’s tricky to run where everyone moves between stations because you have to stay within 10 minutes. And we had a situation where one of the stations just was continuously slow and blocking the flow system-
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah.
James Maskell:
And so that was frustrating. And also I didn’t want to be getting into a dysregulated state to do this, but ultimately we had to move things along because it was all reliant on people not going too long.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Less experts, because we’re always going to be too-
James Maskell:
Exactly. Too experts, too expert-y. That’s what was happening there. And then I would say the other thing is, yeah, just doing it in a ballroom in the Bellagio, the laughter, I could imagine how laughter is off-putting to people who are breathing and if it’s just happening just there. So the other two events that we’ve done, instead of having people go from station to station, one after the other, we actually have it where everyone’s doing the same thing at the same time. And that does allow us to essentially have an unlimited number of people that can do it at the same time, which I think is good. And an unlimited number of, it could be as big as it needs to be. And also everyone’s doing the same thing at the same time. So there was some lessons there. The food at the Bellagio was annoying, but that has nothing to do with VagusFest. But I will say that that was a source of stress for me because if you could spend $12,000 on food and some people don’t get enough food, that is a stressful situation.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
That can be stressful.
James Maskell:
I apologize for that. And I blame you, the Bellagio catering department. Anyway, so now—
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Now, when you had them all doing everything at one time, did you still break them into smaller groups to integrate and communicate around what they just experienced?
James Maskell:
Yeah, so then we went to Austin the week after, and we had a group in Austin. So first of all, in Austin, it was in the park. That was great. And we did it all at the same time. So we had actually a few different station hosts, but everyone was doing the same thing at the same time. Which one remove the need to stay within the 10 minutes per station, which was actually cool if it needed to take a bit longer, it took a bit longer. If it was a bit shorter, it’s a bit shorter. So that was good. There was no time pressure. Secondly, everyone’s doing the same thing at the same time, and that seemed to really work, but in the same way that I brought you in as an expert and you upgraded the whole experience, I would say I had a couple people there that really upgraded the whole experience.
So Carla was there because Carla Melanbek is from Austin, and she came along and she brought a friend of hers who was a breath work instructor. And the thing that he did that will forever change the VagusFest and has made it so much better, and if you watch the video, you’ll see it in action. What he was able to do is he created a structure where groups of people could sit in a circle or stand in a circle, we’ve done it both ways now, and overcome the friction or the awkwardness of meeting new people. And he did it through rubbing your hands together and then putting your hands out and rubbing it with other people and then clapping with other people and then feeling with your hands an inch away from each other, feeling the energy of other people.
And it was amazing for just completely for creating real cohesion really quickly. And that’s actually a big part of the point of VagusFest is that I see that group medicine is the future of medicine. I feel like there’s a big part of group medicine in how we deliver functional medicine at scale, how it becomes the standard of care, but there’s always this, what would you say? There’s this—
Kelly Livingston, ND:
A barrier.
James Maskell:
…going from the unknown to the known is tricky. And how do you create that kind of cohesion at the beginning of a group visit? How do you make people feel seen? How do you make people feel safe? This is it, my friends, this is it. He nailed it and it was amazing, and I’m super grateful to him and the VagusFest forever be awesome because of that learning that happened there. So I’m really grateful for-
Kelly Livingston, ND:
On that.
James Maskell:
…him.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Well, yeah, essentially you’re feeling your own qi, your beast, your energy, and then you’re sharing that with others. And any group program, I personally think, and I run a group program and I know that sometimes it’s hard to get people to want to engage, but any program would do better by launching first with a VagusFest or with some education around this and then experience of it. And I think it’s just a wonderful starting point for any group healing process.
James Maskell:
Beautiful. Well, big shout out to Daniel Duron. He’s Whole Sky Healing Arts on Instagram. It was a great gift that he has bestowed on all of us by nailing that. So that was amazing and that was really a great experience. I really enjoyed the connection. It was great having it in the park. You could really see that that was the natural home for it. People were connected. It was at a picnic environment, so there was a lot of ease and flow. There were practitioners of all areas, and it was just a really joyful experience. I really loved it. We had a perfect evening. It had been a 105 degrees every night in Austin that week, and somehow it was 80 and perfect that night. We had an amazing sunset. So I’m just really grateful for the way that that worked out.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
You guys got the good weather juju.
James Maskell:
Yeah, good weather, was perfect. And then we took it to a conference. So we took it to a conference. It was the Freedom Practice Coaching quarterly conference, and I announced it on the Friday. I was emceeing the conference, and then on the Saturday morning we did it. Now it replaced at that conference, the morning workout. And actually this is the way, if you’re listening to this and you run a conference next year, get us involved with it. We’ll do a VagusFest in the morning to start the day as a participatory learning event. And I’m excited to be part of many conferences. We’ve actually got the integrated medicine for mental health conference in DC we’ll be doing it. There’s the Mexican Lifestyle Medicine, which is also in October. We’ll be doing it. I’m doing one in July in Colorado Springs with a group of 40 high-level practitioners from Andrea Nakiama’s program.
And I think we’ll be doing it regularly at Functional Forum meetups and so forth. So anyway, but yeah, it was really valuable. So maybe not a 100, but at least 70 practitioners decided that they wanted to do it. We met at 6:50 in the morning. We were at the River Walk in San Antonio. Now what I found out, there’s no grass anywhere near there. And so we actually did it in possibly the least inspiring venue of all time, which is under the underpass by the rope, by the River Walk with no one else there, because it was seven in the morning, there’s no one. There was a homeless person that swam along, totally swam. You’re not meant to swim in that river but swam along. But that was exciting, but it was amazing. It was really, really amazing.
I feel like that group was very into it and excited and we had everyone do it together. The people that were speaking stood up on a flower bed that was raised maybe three or four feet. So it made a natural stage and we were able to take people through it, and it was profound. People really enjoyed, we worked the community cohesion. We had people standing up, you couldn’t sit down because it was just dirty concrete. So people did the whole thing standing up. We were able to take some of the movements like the cat cow and do it in a standing way and still get the same sort of value. Some of the things that have been worked in there. There’s a way that you can stretch to the side. There’s a range of movement, range of motion piece that we’ve brought in that’s really powerful.
The quiz is really valuable. I think we worked out, we need to move through the quiz quickly, especially if you’re standing up, you want to be moving through that learning process. And it was really valuable. And to hear throughout these three events after the IFM one, I was stopped at breakfast the morning after it and the woman or two mornings later, and she said it was really powerful. I work with women who are traumatized and abused in Cleveland and I would love to do this with them. And I was like, “hallelujah.” This is why we’re here. So yeah, it’s been a great experience. So, I would say now, today, as of you listening to this, if you’re listening to this, you can run a VagusFest.
We have the scripts, we’ve modified the scripts. We have essentially six segments. So there’s an introduction, there’s a quiz, there’s a breath work and humming station, there’s a laughter and movement station, there’s a home care station, and then there’s a pitch your practice station so that any practitioner can take people through experiencing vagal toning, doing it for themselves. And then it’s like, Hey, if you like participatory medicine, if you enjoyed this and you want to be part of it, then here’s how you come into my practice. And one of the things I enjoyed about your pitch was that you had two options to come in. You had a group program probably slightly less than it costs to come in and see you one-on-one, but ultimately you create a structure where now you have a few different pathways into the practice.
And my hope is if you’re listening to this, now there’s a little bit more meat on the bone. We’ve got good scripts, we’ve done it well, we’ve got a great video. Over the next few months, we’ll bring out videos for you to market to patients. We will bring out other assets to make it easy for you to do it. But right now, I feel extremely confident that anyone could take those scripts. We have a 30-day guide on how to run a VagusFest. We have marketing, we have PR copy, we have email copy. We have a step-by-step guide on how to put it on ticket leap, which was one of the things that you found for us because Eventbrite doesn’t allow you to do free events for more than 25 people.
So I guess I just want to finish by saying, Kelly, thank you for all of your help and participation. It was really wonderful and I hope that after you see the assets and participate, this is something that you want to do in those nine yoga studios and that you want to do more regularly. And I guess I just want to finish by saying the other thing that came up during the Freedom Practice event was the fact that yes, this can be done to engage people into the community and as a way to take people from zero to one into your practice. But one of the things that came up during that conference was how valuable it could be to use nervous system regulation techniques at various different points of your practice.
So, if you think about it in order, in order, let’s take in the promotion concept, if we’re going to promote the practice, you could do a VagusFest to bring people into the practice. The second P could be in pre-education. You want to pre-education your patients about what they’re going to experience in your practice. Why just pre-educate them in a solely didactic way when the experience of the medicine is participatory. So there’s a pre-education. Imagine instead of doing just a webinar to tell people about your practice, imagine in that webinar having people do these things at home to learn some of those skills. Then there’s what they call a PME, a patient member evaluation.
There’s some point, typically in every practice, there is a moment where you have to convince the person to invest in themselves and to take care of their own health and to do something new that they haven’t done before. And that can be a triggering moment. So are there tools that you can bring to get people into a loving, coherent space before they make the choice to invest in themselves? I think that’s really valuable. And so that’s another piece. And then the program, the fourth P, yeah, how can you use ongoing group programs? How can you use the polyvagal theory to create real safety? Safety is not really going to be created out there in the world by anyone else, but you have the ability to create safety ongoing in your programs and that every patient can experience that, whether that’s just a part of your journey or otherwise.
And so that was something that came from doing it at the FPC conference because those guys have been in the business for 12 years, are really thinking through how do you go from someone who doesn’t know anything about you in the community right the way through to engaging them, having them go through a program, and ideally on the other side of it, being free for chronic illness for life. That’s the dream. That’s what we’re in the business of. And it was really exciting to see that through those four experiences, yours and then the other three. I think I can now see a journey whereby which nervous system regulation can be a core part of any functional practice, and the outcomes will be better and the experience will be better, and it’ll be good for the practitioner, it’ll be good for the patient, it’ll be good for the community, and what else is there?
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah, yeah, because you can do all the things, but if you’re not in a healing state, then you’re not going to heal. So I love it. That’s why I said yes.
James Maskell:
Well, thank you for saying yes, and thank you for everyone listening to this. If you want to say yes, feel free to get in touch with us. We’ll have all the details on how to find the details on VagusFest and how to get involved. We will be excited to support you and we’ll be having a lot more resources coming in the future moments. But in the meantime, I want to say thank you, Kelly, for your participation. Thank you for being a wonderful, wonderful guinea pig and thank you for being really committed to the health of your community and committed to this work. A lot of this is new for me, and the things that you’ve added into this will be exponentially valuable for communities all around, and you will never really know the impact that it’s had. But I think hopefully—
Kelly Livingston, ND:
We always, in my practice, we say you can heal the world one nervous system at a time, and so that’s what we’re trying to do.
James Maskell:
Where can people find out more about your practice, Doc?
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Yeah, so I hang out on Instagram sharing some free nervous system regulation advice. That’s @drkellylivingston, and then I founded and own a clinic, Roots Deep Medicine Clinic. I practice in Darien, Connecticut. I also have a license in California, but mainly I see patients in Connecticut, so you can find me there.
James Maskell:
Beautiful. Well, thanks so much for tuning in. This has been the second podcast in the VagusFest series, and hopefully if you are interested, we’d love to hear from you, and there’s still plenty of time this summer and this fall to put on events in your community and look forward to hearing from you one way or another. This has been The Evolution of Medicine podcast. I’m your host, James Maskell. I’ve been with Dr. Kelly Livingston. Thanks so much for tuning in and we’ll see you next time.
Kelly Livingston, ND:
Thanks, James.
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