➡ The speaker shares their journey of understanding health and vitality through direct experiences, such as experimenting with raw meat and observing others’ interactions with food. They learned about the importance of coherence and vitality in health from a nutritionist and an acupuncturist, which led them to practice osteopathy. They believe that health is not about disease but about levels of vitality, and that disease is an incoherence in the body’s geometry. They emphasize the importance of direct experience and self-reliance in health, and question the reliance on abstract, materialistic explanations for health decisions.

➡ The text discusses the importance of self-awareness and feeling emotions, even the uncomfortable ones, as part of the healing journey. It suggests that many people avoid this process due to the difficulties it presents, but it’s crucial for overall health. The conversation also touches on the principles of osteopathy, emphasizing that it’s not just about manual treatment but understanding the forces of nature in our bodies. Lastly, it introduces Chris, who seems to be joining a team, and expresses excitement about the potential benefits of his involvement.

Okay, welcome, everybody. Another edition of conversations with Dr. Cowan and friends. And as those who’ve listened, you know that some of the friends are people I’ve just met. But this is not the case with Chris because we’ve known each other at least a decade, probably more. And Chris, you know, worked in my office for a number of years, and, you know, we’ve had a lot of conversations through the years. So Chris is an old friend. And I, I there. I think I said this the other. Our previous podcast. One of the things that I really remember you saying that has really been a, a sort of guiding thought for me in all these things that I investigate is when you said, and this was around the virus thing, you know, what are these guys looking at? It’s such an important question because until we know what they’re looking at, we don’t really know the story.

Doesn’t mean what they’re looking at is right, but they’re looking at something. So. But the good news is Chris has become the newest practitioner, primary wellness specialist, as we call them, at the new biology clinic. And I am thrilled because I can’t think of a better person to join us. And I think it will be good for you, Chris, to be part of the group, but really good for the members who choose to work with you. So with that, maybe if you could just introduce yourself a little bit of, you know, how you got here and then we’ll go from there.

Sure. Well, Tom, again, just public, thank you for everything you’ve done for me and for the community. I know you don’t always like to hear that publicly, but I’m going to keep saying it. Yeah. So. Yeah. So I have a kind of interesting story in the sense that it was. My path towards health was circuitous and my path towards becoming a physician was unpredictable. So I went to college at Brown University and I was studying literature, which was my love, and still is. But that’s just to say that the idea of going to medical school was.

Would have been. If I had made a list that would have been 592 on my list of things I would have been predicting for myself. So I thought I might go into academia. My dad is a distinguished professor, so are other people in my family. So I was thinking maybe I’ll go into academia because I feel comfortable there. So I ended up instead creating a rock band. I don’t know if you know that. I didn’t know that. I did not know that. And it was, it was not just a hobby. We, we really went into it, it was with two other friends of mine from Brown.

Were you a musician in the rock band? Oh yeah, I was the singer. I was the vocalist. I did not know that. Yeah, yeah. You wouldn’t have recognized me. Wow. And so we came to LA and we did that for about four years or so and it was incredible time. Incredible time. Were you pretty successful, your group? No, no, we weren’t successful like that. We were successful for the reasons that we started. It turned out, which. It’s a hard business. I mean really. Yeah. So there’s a lot of great stories there. But. But basically what happened was I got, I got smacked by.

By ill health. I really got taken off my whole. Taken off my horse. Knocked right off my horse. And that’s when I started learning what health is about. You know, losing health is a great way to learn what health is as you know. So what happened? Essentially there was no specific diagnosis for what I had. But I’ll just tell you that right now I weigh about 215 pounds or so. At that time I had lost weight. I remember stepping on a scale at like, like 163 or 164. Yeah. I was a stick figure. My digestion was all kinds of haywire.

Yeah. I mean you’re not, you’re 6:3 or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I remember not being able to walk up the stairs to my apartment. Wow. I had crossed crippling anxiety, just devastating anxiety, which wasn’t even about a content of something. It was just a state that I was in which was basically constant panic. So I couldn’t even shut my eyes at night. There were long periods where I wasn’t getting any sleep. Wow. So I really learned about that aspect of things through that experience. And not to go on and on, there’s long things.

But. But also I had this, these enormous skin eruptions. I had. I had these welts raised welts over maybe 70% of my body or so. Wow. It rarely wear clothes. So I, at the time, you know, I hadn’t, I hadn’t been thinking about. I didn’t know that there were things a person could do to become healthy. That, that’s the level that I was at. You know, I was eating, you know, Wonder Bread and Jiffy and enjoying it, I have to say. But so I went, I activated the avenues that I knew which were all the, you know, standard medical physicians at the time.

And, and man, that, but that was it. That was short lived because I realized very quickly that, you know, there was. That their skill set Is, is limited to the things that they do, meaning physicians, they’re all good at the things they train to do, which are certain diagnostics, you know, certain chemical therapeutics or procedures, and all, you know, all value to them for doing those things. But it’s not, it’s not a. They don’t provide a window into our health. They don’t provide insight into what human health is. That’s a, It’s a different program. So when I, when I learned that, when I found that out, because none of the physicians could help me, they were working me up for cancer.

They were, they were, you know, just shooting all over the place and, and rightfully so, because nobody. There was no diagnosis to put on me. But, but when I realized that health is something different was a major, it was a major moment in my life where I had to restructure my worldview. And part of what helped me restructure my worldview was getting into contact with people who understood health. Those were major moments, radical moments, and I have to include you in that. But I’ll tell one story, which is that I, I was going to an acupuncturist to see if I could get some help, and he didn’t help me by virtue of his techniques, but he referred me to a.

This underground market in Los Angeles. I don’t know if you remember this, this place, Remember that. Yeah. But it was a place that sold raw dairy and sold raw meat. I do remember it. Yes, I do. Yeah. And it was, I mean, the early 2000s, which is when this was going on for me 25 years ago. Whatever was actually, we were talking about Los Angeles. It was an electric time in Los Angeles. The yoga community was on fire. The food communities in LA were just robust. It was an exciting time to be in Los Angeles at the time.

But anyway, that market was shipping in food from Pennsylvania, like best high quality foods. And I linked up with a nutritionist who was part of, part of the group who overseen that, who oversaw that market. And this guy was a proponent of raw food eating. So raw food doesn’t mean eating alfalfa sprouts and mung beans. You know, raw food means, you know, eating the raw meat, raw eggs, raw vegetable juices and raw dairy. And I, I tried on that approach and it changed my health. Within three months, I gained 30 pounds of mass back. All my symptoms went down, let’s just say about 80% or so.

And looking back, like the mechanics of what were happening was a big part of what happened was I had to let go of these entrenched, unexamined ideologies, which is your specialty, you know, But. And they. And they came down. The whole. The whole charade came down, especially with regard to. Because it was incompatible with what you were seeing happening in your body, in your life. Thank you. It was incompatible with my direct experience. Yeah. Right. And so. So one of those ideologies that came down was the germ theory approach to health, because I. I remember I.

You know, back then, I couldn’t just go get raw dairy at the market, so I had to order it as pet food from Virginia. So I was ordering raw goat yogurt from Virginia as pet food is coming frozen, you know, please enjoy with your dog and cat and all that. And I remember. You know, it’s so funny. I remember taking a thimble full because before I had. I didn’t have exposure to these things, so I took a thimble full just to make sure I didn’t spontaneously combust, you know, upon taking it. Yeah. Sepsis and die the next day.

I literally pictured myself, you know. You know, like the headline in the newspaper, you know, local man, Local man found dead next to, you know, thawed raw goat yogurt. You know, I. But of course, it was fine, you know, and then I. I experimented. Experimented with the raw meat again, thinking I might just. Just die instantly. But it turned out to be my savior. And. And so. And I had to look around and look at people who were. Who were interacting with their food, you know, cutting raw chicken on a cutting board and then racing to the sink to put on, you know, a pint of soap, you know, because they’re so scared.

And. And so, yeah, the. The direct experience of my healing led the way. And. And. And I’ll say, looking back on was so interesting because, you know, for this nutri, this nutritionist, for example, he would give seminars on how to prepare food. And I remember now the way he was handling the food. So I learned so much from the way he was handling the food with his hands and talking about it with such reverence. Yeah. Not emotional, not crying. There’s no mood. Sentimental. Right? Nothing like that. Just he was touching the food, holding it, and I.

I could feel he was already using the vitality of that food already. It didn’t have to go in his mouth. He already had it, already felt it. And the way he was showing the juices, there was no fear. It was like. It was just coherence, Just perfect coherence. Wow. And I. And I learned. I learned that. And I look back at the people who taught me things. And it was all, every one of them had that coherence. So like I went to an acupuncturist once when I had all these skin lesions and I was used to doctors, you know, loving up, you know, being tentative, not maybe not even examining me at all.

And this guy just went right with his hand to touching the lesions. No fear, just. No, there’s no fear. And I have to say, you have that too. You know, I pick vegetables with you on many occasions and you might not, you know, you know that, but I’m just saying this, that coherence touching the soil, touching the vegetable, there’s no, there’s not even distance between the things, between the entity touching and the thing itself. That’s, that’s that experience of vitality. It’s the perception of vitality, which is my whole thesis for what health is, its perception of vitality.

And so that’s why when I came upon osteopathy just randomly, I didn’t know about osteopathy at the time, but I saw somebody treating somebody once and it just, it was like a message went across. I just said, oh, that’s what I’ll be doing the rest of my life. Thank you very much. And it’s so interesting because it’s exactly that thing. It was a doctor with his hands going and perceiving the vitality in the patient as a direct experience. That’s, that’s what osteopathy is. Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a whole practice of how to perceive those forces in nature that create health.

So it sounds like in a way the revelation was in some ways similar to what we’ve come to. What I’ve come to. We’re not talking about diseases here, we’re talking about levels of vitality. Yeah, exactly. And disease is such an interesting word and concept. It’s really worth, you know, exploring in depth. But I’ll say that, you know, in all my years practicing osteopathy, what I’ve seen is that disease is at incoherence in the geometry of the body. And I don’t mean just the structure, geometry. There’s a lot that goes into a geometry of a body. Fluid fields, psychic fields, electromagnetics.

But of course, the structure also. Yeah, and, and once, you know, using the hands is, there’s other ways to perceive that, of course, but using the hands. The hands are these, you know, trillion dollar detection devices that can feel so much. And so using the hands we can really see that. That function. The function of the body becomes obstructed, which is what we will say is disease. The function of the body becomes obstructed when those currents of motion, the currents of vitality, are not allowed to operate fully. So essentially, mostly it’s stagnation. So. And it’s just clear as day.

I mean, it just takes a few seconds to feel with the hands how it’s like, oh, that’s, you know, the vitality. Often we can feel there’s. There’s. There’s always health happening. But, man, it can be. It can be a trickle often in people. And it’s just so clear to feel like, oh, it’s just not. It’s not happening. The current is not enlivening that tissue. So it’s like overlapping fields of flow. Some are more dense. We call those physical. Some are more, you know, refined, rarefied, maybe better word that we call emotional or psychic or electromagnetic. But all those are perceivable.

If you get. If you kind of get the hang of it, perfect. That’s exactly what it is. And this is my. This is my kind of thesis that I. That I want to flesh out for people because it can seem vague or esoteric or unapproachable, like, oh, how do I feel? That stuff. It’s not. It’s. It’s a matter of practice, able to perceive the subtleties. And once. Once those. And it’s not intellectual. There’s no. You don’t read a book about it. It’s just. One feels it in their body. Once there is that direct experience, everything changes.

Yeah. No longer do we need any authority to tell us anything. The authority is the intelligence. Yeah, that’s operating. There’s no. It doesn’t matter what somebody says. Somebody can say, take this, don’t take that, eat this, don’t eat that. You want to, you know, be vegan, be carnivore, be raw, be this. None of that matters anymore. You know, it matters at a time for people, but afterwards, all of it falls away. And that’s the beautiful book that you’re going to write at the end of your career that has only blank pages. The new biology book. Yeah, that was Chris’s idea.

New biology book. 200 blank pages, the last page. It’s all bullshit. Yeah, I’m still planning on writing, but that’s the only. That’s the way we get there. Because there’s nothing to say. It’s just the intelligence is operating and that’s. And there’s no more questioning anything because it Might be that, you know, I’ve seen so many people who are on these great diets, great paleo diets or you know, ancestral nutrition diets. And man, they changed my life. I’m not, you know, they changed my life. Western price, nutritional and physical degeneration. The book changed my life. So. And I still eat according to those principles.

But, but there are times, you know, when I see. I’ve seen plenty of people who are on those diets and, and their body can be a total wreck, you know, and some people can be very high vitality and, and not have ever thought about it, what they eat. So it’s not, it’s not a one shot deal like that. It has everything to do with how are we in tune with the, with nature’s principles that are moving through us and can we perceive them? Yeah, we can’t perceive them. Then. Then it’s different because then we have to get our information elsewhere.

Yeah. Then we have to believe somebody else. Yes. And there are times for that. I did that. There’s times for it. It’s not wrong. But ultimately what we’re going for is self reliance. Full self reliance. Right. Yeah, it’s. It’s the health sovereignty movement. Health, health sovereignty. But it can’t be faked, you know, just because we have an idea that that’s right or something that means nothing. That means nothing. It’s just, is there the direct experience or not? And the only way to get that direct experience is through essentially getting in touch with stillness because that’s the, when stillness happens.

Other, that’s when we have the detection of subtleties, capability. You know, Chris, it’s interesting that you say this because I’ve decided not, not too long ago that because so I, I come at things sort of a little bit different, but so I investigate whether there’s a vitamin, whether there’s a hormone. It does. Do we actually have insulin? And I come to the conclusion that that’s a theory. It’s in its hypothetical. So I’m not convinced. And anyways, I don’t really know how to. I don’t have any direct perception of that. And I realized that, you know, most of us, including me, you know, they go, why do, why do you eat oysters? Because they have zinc in it.

Right, Right. But I don’t really know that it has zinc in it. And so I’ve decided for myself to make a commitment to, I’ll say it in the negative, not do stuff because of some reductionist, abstract, materialistic explanation. And I eat, I either eat Oysters or not, because I like how they’re grown, like farmed or caught. And more particular, if I eat them, I either like it or I don’t like it, and I either feel good or I don’t feel good. And what I think is going to happen is that commitment will help me know, because a lot of times I don’t know, I eat oyster and I don’t know how I feel.

I feel the same as I did before I ate the oyster. And I think that’s because I haven’t spent enough time with the commitment to what is it? What, what really happened there? How do I feel, what happened in me? And most of us have essentially almost no experience with that except almost like catastrophes. Right? You know, Exactly. And so we seek out catastrophes so that we feel something that we actually know is true. It’s a weird thing, but I have a feeling that’s what may be happening here. I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more. I think that’s, that’s why people get themselves in all kinds of drama, so they can feel something.

You know, it’s interesting. Like, you know, people who start on a health journey or people who get sick, you know, that person won’t go to a doctor, and anyway, they won’t hear from their doctor, hey, you should start learning how to feel something. They’ll never hear that. It’s all about fixing. But even in the alternative medicine world, it’s like, fix. It’s like fix problem idea, fix problem with a therapy, you know, Right. Take lycopene. It’s from a tomato that’ll fix your prostate. But, but I, I just don’t hear hardly ever the, the sage advice to start, start expanding one sensory awareness.

Just know you don’t hear that. Yeah. And, and, and there’s reasons for that, because expanding sensory awareness is not easy. And what happens is when we start being able to feel things, we start being able to feel things and the things that are in the body, all the old stresses and traumas and disasters and things that have happened, one starts to feel them. So it’s. So that’s. But that’s the healing journey. That, that’s what, that’s why so few people do it. So few, so few people go on that journey because of the demons you face in the dark world, in the dark forest.

You know, that’s the whole fairy tale thing. But that looks like I’d rather not feel. But that’s gonna cause you problems. Yeah, we know that’s, that’s a one Way ticket. Yeah. All right, so just, just for how is, how, how is this going to translate? Because in the new biology, it’s. You’re not going to be able to use your hands. So what, what’s how. I’m sure you’ve thought about that. Like. Yeah, well, I, I was just thinking back in my practice over the decades and I, I do a lot of consulting. I mean, I, I spend an hour with a patient every appointment, so we, I’m consulting all the time, hours and hours a day.

We discuss things with, I discuss things with my patients, so it’s nothing new to me to talk about. Yeah. Health issues and, you know, I have a lot of history in the world of nutrition, like, like we said and. Right. And a lot of personal experience in all kinds of modalities. And so the only difference there would be that it’s virtual, so the person’s not there to hear the words in person. But the other thing that I think you’d find this interesting is that if you were to read the osteopathic literature, the original stuff from Andrew still.

Yeah. Obviously there’s, there’s, you know, he talks about manual therapy, manual treatment, but the principles of osteopathy are separate from manual treatment. The principles of osteopathy are, are just how do we perceive the forces in nature and how they’re working in our body. Yeah. So hands, you know, hands are important, but, but they’re actually secondary. Even if you read definitions of osteopathy, the manual part doesn’t come to a way at the end. And, and if you were to go to osteopathic medical school, you would hear the, the tenants of osteopathy. And they, they are, that structure and function are interrelated, that the, that man is capable of self healing and that man is triune body, mind, spirit.

So there’s no manual therapy. And you know, one of the tenets isn’t we use our hands to do this and that, you know, it’s, they’re, they’re more fundamental principles so we can all partake of those principles wherever and in whatever situation we find ourselves. Yeah. So, so I, so that I would say that it sounds like it’s really about helping the person discover the knowing inside them that we all have that actually will lead them to a better place. Period. Just put a period after that. That’s it. Yeah, yeah. And that’s the way it happened to me.

And that’s the way it happened to you. And it’s probably how it happened to you and everyone else. Because that’s what it is. Yeah. That’s. That’s all there is. That’s all there is. Yeah. Well, I think this is a great introduction, Chris. I think this gives people a really good idea of who you are. And, yeah, I. I’m even more excited to have you on board than I was an hour ago. I was pretty happy about it, that. You know, I think I said this the last time. What. I’ll say it again, because you try. You try to embarrass me by saying good things.

Every once in a while, my wife Linda, who you met, she’ll say to me, that hasn’t happened for a while. You should be more like Chris. Which, of course, kind of annoys me a little bit, but. But I also see the truth. So, yeah, I. Anyways, welcome, Chris, and it’s great to have you. And I think, yeah, it’ll be fun to work together, and I think you’ll really enjoy the rest of the group, and the people will get a lot out of working with you. I’m sure of that. All right, I think we’re good. Yeah. Thanks, Chris.

And we will be in touch. Okay. All right. Right.
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