Dr. Aimee interviews Dr. Lorne Brown, founder of Acubalance Wellness Center in Vancouver about conscious fertility and psychoneuroimmunology. They discuss how tools like acupuncture, hypnosis, and various mind-body techniques can support fertility patients on their journey to pregnancy.
Dr. Brown explains his ‘Notice, Accept, Choose Again’ (NAC) approach for developing emotional resilience and improving cellular health. They also cover the benefits of specific herbal supplements and how a positive mindset can influence fertility outcomes. The conversation emphasizes the importance of being kind to oneself and integrating a holistic approach for reproductive health.
On today’s episode, we’re talking about conscious fertility and psychoneuroimmunology with Dr. Lorne Brown.
Dr. Brown is the founder of Acubalance Wellness Center in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. He left his career as a CPA to receive a doctorate in Traditional Chinese Medicine, also known as TCM, at Vancouver’s International College of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
He continued to pursue training in hypnosis, functional medicine, cold laser therapy, and psych-K, allowing him to offer an integrative approach to assist the body’s innate ability to heal pain, digestive disorders, anxiety, hormone imbalances, and reproductive health issues.
He and I discussed new mind-body tools and methods that can support fertility patients, as well as ways in which mindset can help fertility patients on their path to pregnancy.
Resources:
Listen to my interview on Dr. Brown’s show
Dr. Aimee’s list of supplements
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to IVF and Mindset
00:37 Welcome to the Egg Whisper Show
01:03 Meet Dr. Lorne Brown
02:05 Acupuncture and Fertility
05:16 Herbal Supplements for Fertility
08:00 Mind-Body Tools for Fertility
10:14 The NAC Approach: Notice, Accept, Choose Again
18:58 Guided Meditations and the Choose Again Method
19:25 Floating Through Life: Embracing the Journey
20:04 Riding the Waves: Handling Life’s Challenges
23:29 Psycho Neuroimmunology: Mind-Body Connection
28:15 Manifestation and Emotional Resilience
32:20 Conscious Work and Relationship Healing
35:03 Conclusion and Contact Information
Full Transcript:
Dr. Aimee: I am so excited to have my dear friend Dr. Lorne Brown on the show today. Welcome back, Lorne.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Hey, Dr. Aimee. I’m glad to be back on again as well. I always enjoy talking with you. My patients adore you, by the way. They always tell me they don’t know how, but you always find ways to have time for them, they feel heard, and you answer their emails. Kudos to you as well.
Dr. Aimee: Thank you, Lorne. You’re very sweet and very kind. Thank you.
Last time you were on the show, we talked about acupuncture. I’ll link that up in our show notes or down below on YouTube. Let’s do a quick overview on how acupuncture can be used in support of IVF and transfers. What kind of acupuncture do you recommend for fertility patients?
Dr. Lorne Brown: In that last episode, and to answer that question, we talked about nourishing the soil as the idea in Chinese Medicine, before you plant the seed. In that idea, soil would be a metaphor for your cellular environment. I’m actually not attached to acupuncture per se, although I’m trained in it. I’m a fan of anything that can help the cellular environment to increase blood flow, regulate hormones, lower oxidative stress, improve nutritional deficiencies, inflammation, mitochondria health, so, overall cellular health.
When it comes to what kind of acupuncture, there are many styles. The style that you’re looking for, the goal is do we see a regulation in hormones, does the cycle change. If they have irregular ovulation, do they start to ovulate regularly? If they have pain or clots, very light or very heavy menstrual cycles, does that change? In Chinese Medicine, a healthy cycle has no pain, no to minimal PMS, no clots, and you bleed three to seven days.
The kind of acupuncture I like is seeing people once or twice a week. It’s usually a good three to six months sometimes that we’re working with them to see that shift in the cellular environment that shows up in the physical symptoms, one of them being the menstrual cycle. The ultimate one is pregnancy, having a live birth.
Dr. Aimee: You’re basically hypnotizing the uterus, is what you’re saying.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Yes, I’m hypnotizing it. I am trained as a clinical hypnotherapist, so it’s funny you say that because I am doing that in a lot of my patients, which I call conscious fertility work. I am doing acupuncture with some hypnosis, so it’s funny that you said that.
Dr. Aimee: When I tell patients about acupuncture, I say I really want you to look forward to doing it, I really want you to feel better when you come out of it. If those two things are satisfied, you look forward to it and you feel better coming out of it, then continue it. If you’re not, that might not be the right place for you. It might be good to maybe get a second opinion or maybe consider another way of improving mood and decreasing stress.
There are some studies that have determined that acupuncture has a positive impact on IVF. What are some of those findings that you’ve read about or learned about through your work?
Dr. Lorne Brown: I think since 2002 is when it first started with IVF on transfer day. The most recent analysis that I looked at (at the time of our recording) was the one published in July 2023, and they looked at over 4,700 people going through IVF having acupuncture. Their conclusion was that it increased implantation by 28%, pregnancy rates by 33%, and the most important one was live birth rate by 33%. It decreased the risk of biochemical pregnancies by half. Also, there has been research where they show acupuncture during an IVF setting lowers the anxiety level.
Dr. Aimee: What are some herbal supplements? Do you have any favorites? What do you tell patients?
Dr. Lorne Brown: A healthy prenatal, a good prenatal, CoQ10, Ovasitol. I like N-Acetylcysteine as well, it’s quite common that I prescribe it for my patients. Omega 3. Some that are not familiar for people, Magnesium. I like Magnesium a lot. Vitamin D3 with a K2 combined. Then depending on what, (endometriosis, PCOS, whatever else is going on,) we may add things. But if you ask me what are the most common five, those would be there.
Dr. Aimee: I usually share the exact same list with my patients. I usually add two more things for the patients who have lower egg quality, or even if they don’t, and that’s NAD and Resveratrol. Those are the two that I also add.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Nice. I like to learn from you as well. With the NAD, we haven’t brought it into our clinic yet. There’s oral and then there’s IV. We’re not confident yet that the oral is going to do its trick. Our naturopathic doctor is concerned that it’s going to get stuck somewhere on the pathway so you’re going to have short term benefits and then later issues. She prefers the IV, but we just haven’t brought it into the clinic. What are you doing, and what do you think?
Dr. Aimee: Oral is best.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Okay.
Dr. Aimee: I’m so funny. I am a brand ambassador for this brand, Tru Niagen. I think NR is the best way of increasing NAD in our cells.
Dr. Lorne Brown: And then Resveratrol, again, our naturopathic doctors like that one, but they don’t do it for frozen embryo transfers because somehow it may impact with implantation. They do it for egg quality, but they don’t do it for getting close to a transfer.
Dr. Aimee: 1,000%. It’s part of my beauty line for the eggs. When it comes to my beauty line for the uterine lining, I have a whole other set of things.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Okay. I’m getting little excited goosebumps as we chat because I’m thinking back to 2002 when I really got into reproductive health. I’ve been in practice since 2000. Back then, REIs threw me out of their clinics. It’s different now. This is why I like talking to you, because things change.
Why I’m getting goosebumps is because I always wanted integration. I dreamed of the day that it was integration. I’m sitting here, and you know about Resveratrol. You have your beauty line and your egg quality line, and the implantation. That’s why I’m having goosebumps. Here you are as an REI. For the patients that are sitting here that your REIs are not integrative enough, you don’t want to go back in time. You have no idea how good it is in 2024 when we’re recording this.
Dr. Aimee: What are some mind-body tools that we may not have heard of yet?
Dr. Lorne Brown: If you’re okay, I’ll probably get a little weird, too, if that’s okay.
Dr. Aimee: Totally. Yes.
Dr. Lorne Brown: I like to live in both worlds, my head in the clouds and my feet on the ground. I know we’re going to talk about PNI later as well as part of this.
Dr. Aimee: Careful what you say. Some people might not know that PNI stands for psychoneuroimmunology.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Sure. The mind-body tools, I kind of share why they’re out there, what I would look for. I’m always asking, “Why are we doing it?” Versus just “Do I need acupuncture?” What are we changing in the soil? What are we changing in the cellular environment? Why do we want a mind-body tool?
There is the materialistic view and the quantum view. The Newtonian view and the quantum view. The materialistic is where we’re going to talk about psychoneuroimmunology, the physical shift in your body from stress. Then there’s a spiritual component. On my podcast, The Conscious Fertility Podcast, I bring on credible people, as in they’re trained in neuroscience, they’re physicists or quantum physicists, they’re PhDs in psychology, so I know they’re grounded in the materialistic view of the world, that’s their training. Then they’re also talking about this thing that’s getting the term “consciousness.”
There are things that are happening beyond our five senses called the sixth sense. This is where I say miracles happen, or you tap into your higher self. When I say talking about mind-body tools, how do we remove this filter so we can access our higher self? The metaphor I’ve heard other teachers of consciousness talk about is: there’s the sun.
You love the brightness and you love the warmth from the sun, but today it’s full of dark clouds so you feel cold and you don’t feel the sun. The sun is always there, but in your mind it’s not there, I’ve lost connection to it. But it is there. You have to part the clouds to re-experience the brightness and the warmth of the sun.
Any mind-body tool that can help you part the clouds so you can reconnect to your higher self are tools that I would recommend. There are many out there. The tools I used based on my training as a clinical hypnotherapist and trained in Chinese Medicine, and then just all of the other little certifications I’ve done and my own personal experiences, I just one day had my access and my download, and I developed an approach that I call Notice, Accept, Choose Again. The intention here is it helps you develop emotional resilience. Basically, it’s how to be present so you can deliberately create your reality.
For the listeners that don’t know, you’ve probably heard of the author Eckhart Tolle. He wrote the book The Power of Now. He lives in my city of Vancouver. When I read his book, when you’re present you don’t suffer and you have peace and joy, I was like I want some of this. But I am that left-brain guy. Remember, I used to be a CPA. I was like how do I have this presence? Everybody I would learn from, I’m like, “How?”
One day, after all of the retreats, all of the programs, eventually it dawned on me that all of them are doing this. Notice, Accept, Choose Again.
Dr. Aimee: Say that slower for me.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Notice, Accept, Choose Again.
Dr. Aimee: Notice, Accept, Choose Again.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Since we’re on the NAC approach, I’ll just explain that so it makes sense. When you go unconscious, you’re at the effect of the situation, the external world is impacting you, so you suffer. If you can become awake, be conscious, then you can interrupt that story. I can’t think of the author right now, but his quote kind of goes like this; every situation, you either habitually unconsciously react or you can consciously choose to respond. Every situation.
The reaction that comes out of you is from your programming. You came into this life with some programs and then based on your sex, your religion, your culture, your nationality, and then your parents consciously or unconsciously imprinted programs on you, and society, and you developed these programs that you run. Your behaviors are always congruent with your beliefs. That’s why when you try to lose weight, dieting is not going to work, because you have to go after the programs. If you fix the program, then the behaviors will change. We always like to work with the subconscious.
Going to the Notice, Accept, Choose Again. What are all these teachers of consciousness sharing, in my opinion, what I distilled it down to? First thing is to notice. Everything that happens is neutral and then we give it meaning. We’re meaning makers. The meaning we give it is through the lens of our subconscious programming. If we change the lens of our program, the perception of what is happening is different.
For example, let’s say the reality is white snow, but I have red glasses on, you have pink glasses on, this person has green, and this one blue. Everybody is seeing the white snow, but everybody’s perception is different based on their lens. You change the lens, you perceive reality differently.
Dr. Aimee: I’ll throw in an IVF example. You go in for your baseline ultrasound, you have an ovarian cyst, so you’re going to see that and you can take it in different ways. As a way to learn from it and say I’m going to continue to take care of myself. Or you can take it and think of it as the worst thing that’s ever happened in your life and allow it to let you spiral.
Dr. Lorne Brown: What you’re saying is it’s either happening to you, you spiral, or it’s happening for you. However, be kind to yourself because, your reaction to that ultrasound, you didn’t choose that. That comes from your programming lenses and it is a supercomputer. Your subconscious is fast. You’re not thinking about anything.
You’re riding your bike, you’re driving your car, but the subconscious is doing all of this. You’ve probably all experienced where a ball or a crow almost hits you and without thinking about it, you move your head. You didn’t think about it. Just so you know, your reaction is unconscious. This is why we want to prune the wiring, the synapses of these old programs, and rewire new programs.
In that quote I said, in every situation, you unconsciously habitually react. It’s a program, you didn’t get to choose it, it got imprinted on you. Or you can consciously choose to respond. NAC is how we interrupt the story.
We notice. It takes practice. The first couple of times, you’re going to only do this an hour a day or a week, or years later on an event that happened that you’re still triggered by when you remember it. Everything that happens is neutral and we give it meaning. Notice. When you believe in the story, you make it real. It’s a story and you’re believing it. I have a cyst and it means this, and now you suffer.
The second step, which is counterintuitive, is to accept what is. When you fight with reality, you create resistance. In Chinese Medicine we call this Qi stagnation. When there’s stagnation, there’s pain and disease manifests. When we have free flow of Qi, we have health. Resistance does not feel good. When you can fully accept what is, and I have tools for this, so this is what I do in the A part is conscious work, working on the subconscious, that we surrender, accept what is. This lowers the resistance. This is the key part. These uncomfortable feelings – fear, anger, not good enough, alone – can act as portals to take us into presence.
Now we go back to Eckhart Tolle and being present. When you’re present, when the resistance drops and you’re present, that feels good because you now have flow and receptivity and now inspired thought can flow through you, which leads to inspired action. When you come from fear and lack, you will take action, but often that action will lead to more fear and lack. When you take action from flow and receptivity, from that state of love and feeling whole and complete, you’ll get more of that.
The key really is how do we lower resistance. We accept what is. Again, I use tools to help you get into the present moment. There are tools and gimmicks to help you get there. Eventually, you figure this out and you can do it in real time, but at the beginning some of us that are left-brained need to do this to get into beingness.
Amit Goswami who wrote The Quantum Doctor and The Quantum Integrative Practitioner, I interviewed him on my podcast as well, and he calls it “do, be, do, be, do.” That’s the NAC. We do to get into being and then from beingness we can take action.
The accepting is the key part because the accepting allows you to lower the resistance, to surrender to what is. It does not mean you’re resigned to the situation. It does not mean that you like it. You’re just being authentic. “Right now, I feel afraid.” That’s it. That takes the charge out of it. It sounds counterintuitive, but what you’re doing is you’re practicing or developing that ability to witness and observe because your very nature is peace and joy. You are not your thoughts and feelings. You are not the cloud, the thoughts and feelings. You are the rays. Your very nature is peace and joy.
By developing, strengthening, practicing the witnessing, which we do in surrendering, accepting what is, eventually you tap into what these experts I have on my podcast call your higher self, something greater than self. That’s when it feels like these hands from the universe or from heaven come down and do things for you, all these synchronicities happen.
The Choose Again is once you’re in a state of relief or peace, now you can deliberately choose again. Going back to that quote I shared with you, it’s a modification of Viktor Frankl’s quote in Man’s Search For Meaning. In every situation, you unconsciously habitually react or when you use NAC to interrupt it, you can consciously choose to respond.
Every day when I work with somebody on their fertility journey, it always starts with the fertility journey and then we gently – and I emphasize gently – regress back. Remember, I have some training in clinical hypnotherapy. It’s never about their fertility. There’s always some form of trauma from their childhood, and they heal that. When that resistance comes down, now they get to choose how they want to be and feel in this world. That’s part of the rewiring. Now they’re not coming from lack or fear anymore.
That is the NAC approach. When you asked me what kind of different mind-body tools, that’s my style. But there are guided meditations I share with patients. We want the ones that have really good hypnotic language. There are guided meditations that will relax you, which is key. We need to relax the body, get out of sympathetic into parasympathetic, get out of high beta into alpha, or even theta, brain waves. That’s how you get into the operating system of the subconscious. It’s beyond just relaxation. That’s why I like some of the guided meditations that are out there that help relax you and then start to change the programs that you have been given.
Dr. Aimee: Your Notice, Accept, Choose Again method is very similar to the method I use for patients. I always ask them, “What do you want? What is it going to take? Are you willing to do it?” You have to notice what you want. You have to accept what it’s going to take. If you’re not willing to accept it, you have to choose again. That’s just the gentle reality.
I love what you say, that things are happening for you. I teach my patients this float through life type of mentality. You can’t fight the current, but if you take that float through life mentality where things are not happening to you, but for you, and you’re just going with the flow, your fertility journey will be a heck of a lot easier.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Yes. You’re going to get whatever that destination is. You can either go kicking and screaming…
Dr. Aimee: Or with a wicked sunburn.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Right. Or you could get there and it doesn’t have to be suffering. What I share with patients, the metaphor I’ve come up with that works well for me and them is if you’ve ever canoed or paddle boarded, and you’re out on a calm lake, that’s you at peace. Then a speedboat goes by and, all of a sudden, these waves come.
Life is going to happen. People think if I do this, I’ll always be happy. I just want to change those expectations. Shit is going to come to you. Don’t worry. The question is how do you ride the waves.
What’s supposed to happen as a human experience is when you have this situation, these emotions are meant to go through you, 90 seconds to three minutes. But we have that brain that we suppress it or we project it out, so it gets stuck in our tissues. It’s constantly impacting rather than having gone through us and then we’re back at peace.
Back to the metaphor. It’s counterintuitive. I remember when I was a young child and then when I was a counselor, when the waves came and my staff members said, “Everybody turn into the waves,” and I was like we should get away from the waves. What happens is it’s harder to experience those waves on the side of the canoe or paddle boat versus front straight at it.
It’s counterintuitive to go into your emotions, accept them, experience them, observe them. It takes courage to feel these feelings, because you still have to feel these feelings. I promise you they don’t last more than 90 seconds to three minutes when we do this work.
When you’re on the paddle board, the waves still go up. It’s like whoa, but you’re okay, you’re not being flipped over. Eventually, over 90 seconds to three minutes, the waves pass and now you’re back on a calm lake, and it’s peaceful again. Sometimes in an hour or two, another boat may go by, and you ride the waves. There’s a cyst? Whoa, the waves. Ride the waves.
We’re not saying I have a cyst, that’s great. We’re not doing spiritual bypass. We’re being authentic. If you’re angry, notice you’re angry, accept you’re angry, and then you can choose again. Once that relief happens and the resistance is lowered, then you choose how you want to respond.
Dr. Aimee: Absolutely. Seeing it as something that is happening for you, not something that is happening to you, and use it as an opportunity to grow. Imagine those clouds opening up and feel those rays of sunshine.
Dr. Lorne Brown: The word is opportunity. Your infertility is an opportunity to grow. It’s a wake-up call. Some people get cancer. Some people get a divorce. Some people have financial disasters. Always, it’s an opportunity. I don’t call them a gift because nobody would ask for that. Don’t call it a gift. Life happening for you is not always roses, but those are big waves that happen. This work gives you emotional resilience, so when life throws you the cliché lemons, you make lemonade.
Dr. Aimee: Right. So many patients going through fertility, their first interaction with the medical world is as a fertility patient, and a lot of them haven’t developed these skills. I think patients who are starting their journey should really use this as an opportunity to think of this as a spiritual journey and to learn as much about themselves and how to cope and build resilience at the same time.
Hopefully, everyone is going to listen to this episode, because I’m certainly feeling so inspired and learning so much from you. I’m going to use a lot of the tools that you’ve taught me today with my patients.
I want to talk about psychoneuroimmunology. First of all, what does that mean?
Dr. Lorne Brown: Your thoughts and feelings impact your endocrine system, your hormonal, your nervous system, your immune system. That’s basically what it’s saying. Basically, that modern medicine has now confirmed and validated what the sages have said for thousands of years, your mind-body connection. God forbid they would actually say there is a mind-body connection. They like to give it a nice term called PNI, psychoneuroimmunology or whatever, so they don’t sound so woo-woo, it sounds very medical, like of course this is true.
Dr. Aimee: Of course, it affects your cortisol levels, your sleep, your relationships with people, your relationship with yourself, everything, your pain, your periods, your implantation window, everything.
Dr. Lorne Brown: If we just follow the mechanism, you have a stressful event, the body perceives it as an alarm, then you have the body reacting. Here’s the hormonal immune approach. The body is in alarm, so it releases cortisol. Cortisol affects blood sugar regulation, which can affect other hormones. That leads to chronic inflammation, which we know can lead to many diseases, which can also lead to suppression of the immune system. Now you have all these stress hormones, which turn on and off genes for disease and subfertility.
If you’re able to experience the joy and lower the resistance, feel safe, not in alarm, then you get more of the serotonin, the oxytocin, and the dopamine, which turn on and off genes for healing, longevity, and reproduction.
When you have a thought, we talked about the lens, so you have a meaning. Because it’s never the event, it is your perception. For example, there are certain things that happen that no matter how sensitive or not sensitive you are, you’re going to be affected by it, like child abuse. But there are certain things people come into this world very sensitive to. It’s a common thing in my practice when I regress people that their abandonment comes from their parents showing up late picking them up from daycare. That’s their abandonment. Somebody who is not that sensitive, that would not impact that child, but if you’re normally sensitive that can do that. It’s how you perceive the situation that causes the stress inside the body. It’s more and more documented that fertility causes stress or trauma, it can be perceived that way.
That would be my simple reason that don’t ignore your thoughts and feelings. It’s like a little smoldering fire underneath and every once in a while it burns up.
Dr. Aimee: I just literally tell patients happy eggs are healthier eggs. Just believe that. I’m a total weirdo, too. I accept it. I tell my patients, “Your eggs are so beautiful.” If they have a partner there, I say, “Please talk to their eggs and tell them how pretty they are. I want you to truly believe that.” There’s just something about it. I feel like of course not every person that tells their eggs they’re beautiful is going to end up with a healthy embryo, but I feel like just the positive affirmations that you give yourself, it’s part of the PNI method, so to speak, that can help patients with their overall health.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Be kind to yourself is what you’re saying. Love yourself. Take your fingers, kiss them, and put them on your ovaries, kiss your ovaries, be grateful for them.
Dr. Aimee: I’m going to have to steal that from you.
Dr. Lorne Brown: I’ll tell you where I thought of that. I was listening to a TED Talk. She developed brain cancer, and she took up a relationship and started practicing gratitude for her brain and kissing her brain. Right away, because of what we do, I was like kiss those ovaries, have gratitude for them, they’re working hard, they’re trying their best.
Dr. Aimee: Oh my God. Where have you been my whole life? That’s incredible. All of my patients are going to be walking around kissing their ovaries.
Dr. Lorne Brown: We could go so weird. There are people I’ve interviewed about remote healing and remote viewing. While your embryo is sitting in the lab trying to grow into a blastocyst, and you’re thinking it’s not going to work and you’re freaking out and crying, that’s the Notice, Accept, Choose Again.
Notice and accept, so have your tears. Bring the resistance down, surrender. Then choose again. Send some loving thoughts to that embryo in the lab and not be attached to form an outcome as part of consciousness. “I would love to be your parent. If I’m the right fit, enter this body, let’s do this.” Send it love, unconditional love. Whatever you can do.
When you do the affirmations, the key is to have those good feelings. I talk about baby manifestation or manifestation in general. This NAC is like step four. The first step is knowing what you want. I call it setting your GPS with the end in mind, so having a baby.
Then you add an emotional charge behind it. I bring this up because you have to feel it. If you’re sitting there kissing your ovaries, but you’re in fear and lack, then that’s not doing anything. It’s the emotions that put the charge behind the thought. That’s the beacon that goes out there. If you’re saying, “I believe I have a baby,” but your subconscious says “no, I don’t,” then you’re sending anything out there.
So, really to put it on a cellular level you have to dismiss the current reality temporarily and allow yourself to imagine the future as if it’s now and that you have your baby and what will be different. The litmus test for any type of manifestation is when it arrives you don’t feel differently because you’ve been practicing that feeling all this time before it arrived, so when it arrived you’ve already been feeling that way. There’s no surprise.
The emotions are key. Then you get into the state of believing it’s going to happen after you practice feeling like it’s happened. Then step four is if you feel the resistance like you just don’t believe it and you have these nagging thoughts and feelings, then we NAC that underlying belief or feeling. When the resistance drops, we go back into the steps again, which is the Choose Again. Set your GPS, feel it, believe it.
Then remembering not to be attached to form an outcome. To me, that is: “this or better is going to happen to me.” If you’re attached to form an outcome then you’re trying to play the universe, god energy. Be open to other ways for things to come to you that bring the joy, bring the love, bring the purpose, whatever it is that you think it is. Don’t restrict yourself, because conscious work requires you to be in the unknown and uncertainty, which doesn’t feel comfortable because it’s unfamiliar. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s because it’s not familiar that it can feel uncomfortable.
Dr. Aimee: I love you, Lorne. We should do this more often. Tell us more about your practice and where people can find you.
Dr. Lorne Brown: I’m practicing in Vancouver, BC. It’s Acubalance Wellness Center. I do conscious work online as well and I have The Conscious Fertility Podcast. I invite people to tune in. I’m on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, so they can find me there.
Dr. Aimee: Tell me more about the one-on-one work you do with patients. If I have a patient that lives in California, for example, how do they work with you?
Dr. Lorne Brown: If somebody is out of town, then they just set up telehealth. I have an initial consultation, I get their history, and then we find out what we can do to nourish the soil. They may want to know about supplements, Chinese herbal medicine, acupuncture, laser, IVF. That’s where I share the resources that I have around the world because I can’t do the acupuncture or laser if you’re out of town.
Some of them do come into town and see me, but for out of town, I direct them here are people you can go to. Hence why you see a lot of people I’ve referred to, because I’m like you want some PRP, check out Dr. Aimee, if you want the TUSHY Method, check out Dr. Aimee. I can do that remotely. Basically, they want a second set of eyes. Sometimes they’re seeing somebody. I just go through it and see what they’re doing and then I can share other things that they could be doing.
If they want to do the conscious work with me, the belief-changing work, they just set up a series of sessions online. Usually, we do at least five sessions. It’s common to do five sessions to see some shifts.
If they’re in person, I treat them in two ways. Either I just do a session without conscious work, so they get herbal recommendations, dietary supplements, acupuncture low level laser therapy, or they can do another type of session where they get that plus they get the conscious work.
Dr. Aimee: Awesome. That’s incredible. I actually think that you could help couples as well. I imagine the work you do can also heal relationships. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
Dr. Lorne Brown: Yes. I’m smiling because I never do relationship work with them together because it only takes one person to be conscious to heal a relationship. My teacher, Gila Golub, has two episodes on my podcast. I love it, she says relationships are not here to make you happy, they’re here to make you conscious, so they’re your greatest teacher.
To share some stories, when people do this work, because again, I promise one of two things happen, if the shift happens, when you really do this work. One is your perception of the situation changes. Two is the external environment changes.
The first one is your husband, it just doesn’t bother you what he’s doing, you’re literally not triggered. You’re not ignoring it, you’re not suppressing it. You’re not triggered by it, you feel differently based on it. Or two is his behavior changes.
This was actually my a-ha moment when I discovered conscious work. I was always a seeker. When I was a CPA, I was still showing up at these mind-body workshops. I was in my 20s. I had been trying to change the external world to feel good. If just my staff were this way, if just the government was this way, if just my wife was this way, then I’d feel better. Then I realized if I just change me then my perception of everything else would change. I was like “I can make myself a full-time job, that’s a lot easier than trying to change everybody else.”
For conscious work when it comes to relationships, it just takes one person. Why? Because when the person who is conscious is in a relationship, one is they don’t need their partner to be a certain way for them to feel good. Neediness is very uncomfortable, it’s unattractive, so the partner is not feeling that need anymore because you’re tapped in getting it filled another way. You’re not looking for them to fill you up.
Two is remember to notice, don’t take it personally. When your husband is an ass, you’re curious what’s going on for them, how old are they in this moment right now, what program are they running, and you’re not making it about you, you’re not taking it personally anymore so you’re not affected by it. That’s why it helps.
The other person has temporary relief because every human being wants to be seen and heard. That’s how we feel loved. This is to quote Gordan Neufeld, a local attachment therapist here in Vancouver, also on The Conscious Fertility Podcast. When you’re conscious, you’re able to be present, hold the space, and hear them. You don’t need them to see and hear you because you already do that for you.
When you become conscious, you’re no longer looking for the external world to validate you. Yes, it feels good when it happens, but you’re very clear that those are temporary pleasure feelings, they’re not your nature. When I talk about you’re happy, your very nature is peace and joy, that’s why you’re happy.
Dr. Aimee: I love it. Thank you, Dr. Lorne Brown from Acubalance Wellness Center in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. We love you. Thank you for all of the work that you do. I have a feeling that this podcast episode will be shared for years to come. Thank you, Lorne.
Dr. Lorne Brown: Thanks for the opportunity, Aimee.
