Dr. Jacey Goddard: Holistic Healing

Lisa Belisle: Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine. Today I have with me a friend and colleague, Dr. Jacey Goddard. Thanks for coming in today.

Jacey Goddard: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Lisa Belisle: You and I go back a long way. We have kind of a shared interest in integrative medicine. I'm a really big proponent of the type of work that you do. I was a patient at one point. I probably still could benefit from being a patient.

Jacey Goddard: Probably.

Lisa Belisle: Probably, but almost anybody could really.

Jacey Goddard: Absolutely.

Lisa Belisle: But tell me about osteopathic manipulative treatment, or musculoskeletal medicine, OMM. I think people put them all in one big bucket, but they're not all the same.

Jacey Goddard: Correct. So osteopathic physicians go to medical school, as you know, and we end up with this name DO, but not all DOs do what I do, which is the manipulation part. A lot of people will try to explain what we do, and it's not really that easy to understand unless you've had it done. But it's sort of somewhere in between chiropractic and massage, or cranial, what people call craniosacral therapy. A lot of those modalities actually come from osteopathic medicine, which started in the late 1800s. So we deal with people who have problems that the traditional medicine can't fix, pain that can't get help. Lots of people with headaches get serious relief from what we do, and it's really great and it's really fulfilling. Babies, we help babies who can't latch, people with low back pain, things like that. So that's my favorite thing to do, is help someone that no one else has been able to help.

Lisa Belisle: And when you talk about, well, let's start with babies for example. With little kids, we often just kind of assume, all right, well, they come out into the world and here they are and they're going to be what they're going to be. But you can actually start working with newborns right off the bat and have quite a bit of benefit.

Jacey Goddard: Yes, absolutely. To me it's almost miraculous. Even when I was just still in my training, there was a baby that could not even get its mouth to latch around the bottle. They were having to feed it with a syringe. And I watched under my hands with this really gentle treatment, the baby latched, and it's not that hard. It's super gentle and it's super effective. I had a mom the other day say something like, wow, so if this doesn't get fixed, they might have problems down the road. I was like, yeah, because if things are tight and things are pooling and there's tension, it could affect their gut, it could affect their swallowing, it could affect their nervous system. So yeah, it can be very helpful.

Lisa Belisle: It's interesting because we think of babies and they're kind of these little smush balls, and obviously they're able to emerge out of a fairly tight space, but of course it's possible they would come out with their bodies a little bit rearranged and need to be aligned. But we just all kind of assume, well, they're just babies. What could possibly go wrong when you're just being born?

Jacey Goddard: Yeah. Well, I think actually the birth process in general is supposed to help the baby have a good result, be born with no problems, but sometimes it's the really fast deliveries. Paradoxically, the babies have more problems, or the really long, difficult ones, or the C-sections are the ones that we see babies have a little bit more trouble, versus the moderate, gentle squeeze. They do fine.

Lisa Belisle: Typically, right? If they're doing the normal course, they're getting kind of a massage.

Jacey Goddard: Yeah, exactly.

Lisa Belisle: A pretty intense massage. But it's sort of...

Jacey Goddard: A perfectly designed massage. The body has this design, and sometimes we just need a little help so it can do what it's supposed to do.

Lisa Belisle: Right. So in the craniosacral work, it is super gentle. What you are doing with your hands is so subtle in the sensing that you are able to do with people's bodies. It really is something that, I think it's very difficult to describe, certainly as one who's had it, but as someone who's done it for a long time, does it improve with practice? Are you able to become better over the years of doing this work?

Jacey Goddard: Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of astounding to me over the years what's happened. I've been doing this work since I was a medical student. I was a teaching assistant, so I got to actually start treating people at that time. So it's been like 30 years that I've been working with people. And everybody has, I really believe everybody has that capacity. But the more we do it, the more we feel. It can be super gentle. Some people who take a craniosacral course, anybody can do that in a weekend course. But we have this foundation that's based on anatomy and physiology and real deep medical training, actually what every bone and structure in the body, how it moves in every direction. So there's this foundational, anatomical way of looking at it. But then there is this more subtle thing that starts to happen where we can really start to perceive things more deeply, and even perceive in a baby, sometimes you can start to feel like you can even watch, like, wow, oh, their little fist just opened. And it's because we were able to access this deep part of themself where their health resides. And it's a really beautiful thing. The more we practice, the better we get.

Lisa Belisle: I'm really excited about this phase that you're entering into because I know that you are very well regarded and beloved as a practitioner, and now you're trying to get the message out to more people. So you are doing some online work and you're writing a book and some educational things. So talk to me about that process. How has that evolved for you? How did you get to that place where you want to go?

Jacey Goddard: Yeah, absolutely. So I've had my own personal health journey and learned how to relate to my body in healthy ways, in terms of how I perceive my body. It's been sort of this organic experience over my entire life, but then in particular over my medical career and my professional career, and I started to see how I could help patients with their pain in terms of how they were relating to their body. For example, oh, I'm going to cut myself off from this part of my body because it's hurting me. Or maybe the person's cutting themselves off from this part of their body because they had a trauma in the past. And there's nothing wrong with that per se. That's sort of an instinctive, protective mechanism. But what I've started to see and realize is that, wow, I think human beings are built to relate to their bodies in this really whole person healthy way.

We're wired to actually feel peace and be connected and feel happy and listen to our gut feelings, for example, and breathe normally. And I find myself saying, why didn't they teach us this in second grade, or when we were five, these basic concepts? It's not really complicated. So I've been working with patients, and sometimes it's like, wow, I think you're not in your body. They're like, oh my gosh, I think you're right. And then when they start to just make that simple connection, they're like, oh, that feels so much better. So that's really what I'm starting to see, these really amazing benefits where people are really starting to come into their own and find joy in their life and peace in their life. And I just want that for more people.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I remember early on practicing acupuncture, I would teach people how to breathe, and it was amazing how many people, they keep their breath right up here and it never goes any lower. And our lungs go all the way down here, and our diaphragms obviously expand our chest cavities. So taking the time to say to people, take a deep breath and actually push your belly up toward the ceiling. And then they were like, wow, there's a whole other space in there that I'm not even using. And that's just breath, that's just lungs. So to have to reeducate people on something that's so intuitive to the human experience, you're right, it's so simple. And yet it's so uncommon that people remain connected to their own breath throughout their lives.

Jacey Goddard: And I think the beautiful thing, I actually do the same kind of process with patients, and I used to almost do that with every patient every time they came in. Actually in my book that I'm working on, I think that's chapter two, about the breathing. But the really interesting thing, just like you're saying, the more we can breathe into the lower part of our body, that's just a first connection that we can make. And it can be dramatic what it can do for us, and it's just a matter of a little bit of practice and paying a little bit of attention. So it's really great. Like I said, the body is wired, the body has everything set up for it, and we're human beings. I think there's more available for us as human beings to be a whole person and connected to all that. And the breath is a really great simple way to do that.

Lisa Belisle: So if that's chapter two, what's chapter one?

Jacey Goddard: Chapter one is about a patient that I just alluded to earlier, that she was somebody that had a lot of psychological problems and a very difficult trauma history in the past. And when I was working with her, her arms were up in the air and she was talking, and I was like, I think you're not in your body. And I had never even thought about that before. And she said, oh, no, what do I do? And I said, I really don't know. Can you go back in? And she did. So chapter one is really just this concept of, we have a body, why aren't we really in it? We're in our heads. And even for those of us that didn't have a difficult trauma experience or childhood, I think this world today is asking so much of us, this social media world is asking a lot of us, and AI, and it's like pulling us outside of ourselves.

We're trying to perform. And what I've found is the AI and social media and technology, that's all great, but we also have this inner technology. So I think if we really want to make the most of that, it's about getting with ourselves so that we can really use all those pieces. Lately, I've been talking about this, it's like driving in your car with your head out the sunroof. It's like you can't reach the gas pedal, you can't reach the brake pedal, you can't adjust the sound in your radio, you can't adjust the temperature, you can't really see where you're going. So we want to get in the driver's seat and then we can really have control of where we're trying to go, and all these beautiful things happen. I've been doing this, and it's like, wow, I have this creative thing coming out of me now, and so now I want to, it's given me access to so much more, and I want that for everybody.

Lisa Belisle: I think the sense of not being in our bodies is really powerful. And if we're not in our bodies, sort of where are we? We're existing, I don't know, in the ether, in something that's the collective unconscious, but in an electronic way. What does that even mean for us as a culture?

Jacey Goddard: And I think unfortunately, we are often living our lives for an idea, or we're living our lives for someone else, or I have to do this because this is what my work is requiring of me, or maybe my religion is requiring of me, or maybe my mother made me think I needed to do, or whatever. It could be absolutely anything. So it's, where am I? And so this work helps us to start to connect to ourselves. Okay, wait a second, I don't have to live my life for this external expectation. What does the inside of me want? Who is me? Who am I? And I never really knew, all these spiritual gurus, right? All this work, you can go to Tibet and you can go to all these places and you can do all this meditation, you can take this masterclass on meditation.

But what I found and what I find so fascinating is just simply getting in the body is going to calm our nervous system, and simply breathing into the body, for example, calms our nervous system. And then those connections are already there and they start to happen and we can start to feel peace and we can start to feel like, oh, wait a minute, there I am, oh, I'm in here. And it's like, oh, I want this, I don't want that. And we can start to know a little bit more clearly, instead of just being out in the ether or living our lives for some other situation or person or idea. And I would also add that we can do a lot of psychological work, and there are some really amazing therapies and concepts that people are working with. But I have a patient who showed me that she had the idea all figured out in her head, but she still wasn't feeling good. And I was like, well, can you tell your body that idea? And as soon as she did that, poof, the whole thing shifted. I was like, whoa, amazing. So it's my patients that have taught me this over the years, and it's really beautiful. It's really great.

Lisa Belisle: I remember when I first moved from family medicine and my family medicine practice into my acupuncture practice, and I had this feeling that I was treating patients that were basically like heads on sticks. We're just walking around. We're just this intellectual aspect of ourselves. So it's almost like if you're head on a stick, but then all of a sudden the stick starts to turn into a tree and then the trees start to get rooted back into the ground. And when I worked in Qigong and worked with the Qigong master, he would tell us, try to reground yourself, actually step on grass and reground yourself with the world around you. And then you're not this head on a stick that's walking around. You're actually kind of a tree that's interacting with the environment. So I think that when you talk about moving back into your body, if we're not even in our bodies, how do we even connect with the world around us, the people that we coexist with? There's so many ramifications of just being here.

Jacey Goddard: Absolutely. And I love that you brought up this tree metaphor because it's so interesting that you did that, because the tree is the logo for our practice. And actually I'm still using the tree for this other work that I'm doing because it's just sort of a simplified version of it. But it is, it's our roots and our branches, and things should flow between us from top to bottom. And absolutely, the grounding, I'm giving it away, but grounding is chapter three.

Lisa Belisle: So we're just going to go through the whole book. And then people are like, oh, I don't need to read it after all.

Jacey Goddard: You don't need to read it. And really that is the secret, the messages about getting in our body and really getting grounded and getting in the lower part of our body. And that's the idea. And what we really need is the experience. So how do we do that? Just by practice. But what I'm offering people is the simple steps and how to practice it and how to bring that into our lives. Because I can go and meditate for four hours, but if I don't bring that into my daily life, then that's where the problem is. So it's like, how do I get this whole sense of self and peace and groundedness and being with myself, and how do I bring that into more aspects of my life? So yep, that's the tree. It's the whole person. And it's interesting that a plant is so representative of us, but I guess that's nature, and that's our inner nature, and everything's connected. So why wouldn't we want to be connected to everything that is connected?

Lisa Belisle: Well, wasn't it interesting that during Covid, a lot of people became plant parents?

Jacey Goddard: Absolutely.

Lisa Belisle: The ones who didn't get puppies, for example, and people really wanted to connect back to these living things. They were disconnected from fellow human beings, and there was so much fear around that. So people were propagating little baby plants to put on their window sills. And I was telling someone this morning, because I knew you were coming in, there was a plant that you actually shared a little piece of, way before Covid. You still have that.

Jacey Goddard: Okay.

Lisa Belisle: I have multiple versions of that one. But just that idea of the living thing that is there, that is like, okay, well yeah, there's a pandemic out there, but I'm just going to keep on growing, so just put me in the sunlight, give me some water. I'm going to do what I'm meant to do. And having that ability to connect with these little plants, even through a really difficult worldwide experience, I think it was really powerful.

Jacey Goddard: Absolutely. And there's this whole movement called forest bathing. I think that's a great concept. People come to Maine, for example, because they need to get back to nature, because here we live a little bit closer to nature. But if we have a plant on our window sill, then we can actually connect to that. And that's a later chapter in the book. I haven't decided exactly which chapter, but we can connect to nature. Nature's always around us. We can connect to the air that's in the room, we connect to the ocean that's outside, we can connect to the dew on the leaves, and it's always there for us. And nature's always supporting us. Just like we're plants too. We're trees too. And there's this beautiful, interesting concept actually of transpiration and how the dew comes off the trees, which is water, and then it goes into the air and then it falls down as rain and goes into the earth and comes back up into the roots into the tree.

And we live in nature. And no matter how far we are, we can be right in Manhattan and still connect to nature and still have it right there for us. So it's a beautiful thing, and I think we just need help learning to take advantage of that. I think our ancestors and the Native Americans did that. And I think it's our right as human beings, it's our duty as human beings to ourselves to do that. And I think the more we do that, the more peace we feel, the kinder we can be, the more patient we can be to one another, the more we can really feel the truth and what's right and do good things in the world.

Lisa Belisle: So we've talked about at least three or four of your chapters. What things have we talked about that you're going to be discussing?

Jacey Goddard: There's a chapter about self-soothing, how we can relate to ourselves in a healthy, loving way. Some little tricks of how we can reassure ourselves, calm ourselves, trick our nervous system in a nice way into, oh, wait a second, there's that piece, there's that rest digest part of our nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system that can calm me, heal me. That's where the healing is. There's a chapter on trauma and how to work with that. There is a chapter on even how we relate to food, in terms of not doing what we should, but doing what feels right to us, a chapter on nature and spirit, how to connect spiritually. And I would say that's not based on some external idea or any religion. Each person has their own process for that, their own relationship with that. And the beauty of this work is that once we start to feel ourselves and connect with ourselves, that's right there.

And I believe our spirit is inside us. It's not some outside distant thing. I used to think, in our osteopathic profession, we have these principles and they talk about the body's a unit, mind, body, spirit. And I used to think it was like, oh, okay, these three connected circles. But I've come to believe that there are actually three concentric circles. So our mind is in our body, our spirit is in our body, and we want all those to work together to be integrated. So it's really about that integration. And once you start to look at these things, you're like, oh, wow, that actually is related to that. So when I write one chapter, I'm like, wait, but that belongs in the other chapter, but wait, that belongs in this chapter, and it's so beautiful. It all kind of weaves together and it's so simple, but we just need some steps and stepping stones and a roadmap to find it and to start to make those connections. And then once we do that, things really start happening.

Lisa Belisle: And I think what you've suggested also is just regularly practicing these things. So if you can pattern a body and a life in a very specific, maybe not as much flow kind of way, but you can also very mindfully do the other and practice having a life that is more in flow.

Jacey Goddard: Absolutely. And your example of the breathing is a perfect example of that. So if I take a master class or take a special class and do this special counted breathing, that's useful and it's great, but if I'm not breathing, I'm not really bringing that into my day, into my moment to moment of the day, then I'm really not taking full advantage of that healthy, connected breathing. So it's really about practicing, and it's just about moment to moment, like, oh wait, I'm not feeling good. Why am I not feeling good? Oh, I'm holding my breath. Okay, I'm going to make sure I'm breathing so that I'm not feeling anxious in this moment, or I'm stressed about this situation. Well, what if I breathe into it? Then I can start to feel more grounded in my body and more connected. And it's such a gift and it's right there for us. So we just need to practice a little bit and take advantage. If we're not feeling well, maybe we just need to tweak some things. So it's not as hard. I think people think it's hard or complicated, and it's really not complicated. It just takes a little bit of practice. And that's really what I am excited to share with people.

Lisa Belisle: I think Maine is really fortunate because we have a very active osteopathic community. We have a wonderful osteopathic medical school, which I know is in the process of expanding at the organization I work with. We have all kinds of osteopathic physicians, and one of the things that I wonder about is, will osteopathic medicine, when you actually are practicing OMM or NMM, could it potentially be a way to save medicine? Because I have practitioners who come in as family doctors and they're like, I can't do a 40 hour work week doing traditional family medicine, but let me do half of my time doing osteopathic manipulative medicine. And they seem so much happier to be able to actually really reconnect to that healing.

Jacey Goddard: Definitely, definitely. I totally agree. I think the patients feel that way too because we're sort of run by the insurance industry. A lot of people feel that their doctors don't care. They don't spend enough time with them, but it's not because they don't care. I have training in family medicine, and I did that, I did those 15 minute visits. Sometimes I had two patients in a 15 minute visit. And it's because of the system. It's because of the construct, and it's not because the doctor doesn't care. Most people that go into medicine really want to take care of people and spend that time. And I am hopeful that the system shifts. I think the patients are saying, I need more time with my doctor, and the doctor's like, I need more time to help them understand what's really going to prevent that diabetes from getting worse or prevent heart problems down the road.

And that takes time and it takes a relationship. And I really hope that it doesn't take too long for the system to shift. I believe it will. I tend to be very optimistic, sort of idealist, but I think it will shift. And I think it's between the patients and the physicians, they're going to say, this isn't working. This isn't about AI running the practice of medicine, this protocol algorithm driven model. It's about really each person as an individual and what that person needs, because there may be a different reason why this person is relating to their diabetes compared to someone else, maybe from some other aspect of who they are. And so that's really the art of medicine. And I think that's what the old docs used to do. They used to know the family, they used to know all the pieces, and psychology. And that's what's missing, because the system has gotten sort of dumbed down into this, just order the X-ray, don't touch the patient, just send them off to somebody else. And it's much more than that. And I think human beings want more. We want more. So I hope we get there soon.

Lisa Belisle: Well, I can tell you my experience with people who want osteopathic medicine is we have not enough people who do that work, and we can't get people in to see practitioners. So there's clearly a demand.

Jacey Goddard: There's a demand. And I think there's also the osteopathic physicians, we have a little bit of an identity problem because we don't tend to advertise what we do. And a lot of DOs, just because of the training, they train in hospitals with MDs, they don't always get all those opportunities to really keep their skills that they learn. We all learn it. We all learn all of those basic techniques in medical school, but we don't have the opportunity to keep it going. So maybe that will be something that follows, because as the docs, and I know people that have done that, oh yeah, I'm going to do this manipulation practice, I'm going to do this more integrative practice, because they really want to take better care of their patients. So I hope more and more people going into osteopathic medicine recognize that and learn to think outside the box and not get brainwashed by the process. I mean, the medicine that we learn is really important. All that stuff is important. The pharmacology, the anatomy, the physiology is really important. But there's more to it than just what I think is the drug companies driving sometimes our educational process, or the decisions that we make instead of really what's best for the patient. So hopefully that's going to just keep getting better and better as people start to wake up into what real health is.

Lisa Belisle: So knowing that you've been doing this, you and I are kind of roughly contemporaries. We've been in medicine roughly the same amount of time, and you have been so dedicated to this model of medicine, and I'm sure it hasn't always been easy, and it probably wasn't easy when you first made the decision to actually really focus on this model. But what keeps you going? What keeps you focused on, this is what I would like to do, this is what I would like to offer the people that I work with?

Jacey Goddard: The thing that absolutely keeps me going is, I can't stand it when there's someone out there in pain and they don't know that somebody can help them. It just shouldn't be, because there's something that's relatively straightforward. There are people that we see that have been two years with low back pain, and then they come in. Sometimes it's as quick as a visit or two. Sometimes it's much more complicated and it takes more than that, but it's that kind of thing that keeps me going. There is so much available that can help a person, and when somebody feels better, they're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I didn't know about this. Why don't more people know about this? I think that's really what keeps me going, to really be able to see that.

And even as a medical student, that's really what I was like, oh my goodness, I can help somebody that quickly. I can see a change under my hand and the patient can feel the change instantaneously. That's really what taking care of a person should include, not just, okay, if you take this anti-inflammatory for two months, then things will start to get better. No, it doesn't have to be like that. It's not all about inflammation and you need to kill it, because inflammation's a healthy process, for example. So it's that ability to help somebody more quickly and to help people that otherwise wouldn't be helped that is really what keeps me going. And it's fascinating to me because I'm more and more excited about what I do because of what I've learned working with my patients. Each chapter is a lesson that a patient has taught me, and I'm grateful for that. So that's what keeps me going.

Lisa Belisle: I think when I think about people who have been in medicine a long time, a really long time, longer than us, that's where I think we kind of need to get back to, for people who are just starting their careers or in the middle of their careers. And I guess you and I would be considered sort of mid-career professionals in the technical jargon.

Jacey Goddard: Hopefully.

Lisa Belisle: Right? Exactly. Hopefully there are many years left. I think that's what I hope that we can get people tuned back into, is not what do we have to do for the insurance companies and what do we feel like we need to do to generate our work RVUs and productivity, but what is it that we're learning from our patients? How are we evolving and co-evolving as human beings? And what are we actually getting out of the wellness ecosystem that we're part of as practitioners? And I think it's going to take some convincing, not everybody. We've gotten kind of far away from that. So I think what you're doing right now is really important because you've seen that it works. So it's not just the patients that you're writing for. I think in some ways it's also the practitioners.

Jacey Goddard: And definitely for the practitioners, because I think we're all, well, I'm not having a hard time. I'm really grateful for the kind of practice that I can do. But I think a lot of doctors are having a hard time with the system, and I think it's unfortunate that the system is sort of controlled by people who don't really understand what's important in medicine and health and in those relationships. So I think that's what needs to happen, instead of this capitalism model of how do we make money, how do we control costs? And for example, what we do might keep someone from needing to be on a pain medication or keep them from having that expensive MRI test. And it's about understanding that big picture, that it may take some time. Sometimes the people that are making these decisions, maybe they have the right intention, but they don't understand the whole situation. So like I said, I'm optimistic. I think it's going to get better, but it's probably going to be a process where there's this revolution in medicine, like, okay, wait, what are we doing here? How do we really take care of people? And I think it may end up being patient driven, because people want more help and more access to better help, and how can the system do that for them? So hopefully we can find a way.

Lisa Belisle: Well, having now spent time refreshing my relationship with you just this morning, I feel hopeful, because I think that it does take people who are willing to say, I'm going to write a book about this, I'm going to commit myself to this model, to this work. It's easy to get sucked into the industrial healthcare complex, but to have people who are like, no, no, no, let's not do that, that doesn't make sense. I think that those sorts of voices like yours are very important. So I give you a lot of credit for continuing to do the work that you've done all these years.

Jacey Goddard: Thank you so much. I'm grateful. It's been a process that's been happening my whole life, and not always easy, but it's good work. It's a good thing, and I'm happy to be where I am despite all the challenges.

Lisa Belisle: Well, that is great to hear. And where is it that you are? Where can people find you?

Jacey Goddard: Find me through our website. Our practice name is called River Tree Osteopathic Health. I'm in practice with my husband. We both do osteopathic manipulation, and anybody that wants to do this mind body work, they can actually schedule an appointment through the website. We just have some small amount of slots right now because we're busy with our practice, for mind body appointments, depending on what you want to work on. There are lots of options. And then I'm in the process of developing this whole separate website and a separate opportunity for people to do some courses and direct work with me, or maybe some more work through these kinds of concepts over time. So that's something that's in the works, and you can just find it under my name, dr jc goddard dot com. So the website's not up and running yet, but it's in the works.

Lisa Belisle: It's in the process of going through the birth canal.

Jacey Goddard: Yep, it is. It's coming.

Lisa Belisle: In all the right ways so that when it emerges, it's going to be a perfect little baby coming out into the world.

Jacey Goddard: Yeah.

Lisa Belisle: Thank you. Yes. Well, JC, it's been really a pleasure to reconnect with you this morning. I appreciate your coming in.

Jacey Goddard: Thank you so much. It's really fun to see you again and talk to you about this.

Lisa Belisle: I encourage people to learn more about the work that Dr. JC Goddard and her husband are actually doing in their practice. So please do go to the website as she suggested, and maybe spend some time breathing today, or go walk in the grass if the weather's not bad, if it's not snowing yet. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle. You have been listening to or watching Radio Maine today with Dr. JC Goddard. Thank you very much.