Understand Your Body’s Wisdom and Find Clarity with Energy Medicine, with Dr Mary Sanders | #558

Have you ever felt emotionally exhausted or like something vital is missing from your life, even when everything seems fine on the outside?

So many of us push through high-stress lives or major transitions without realising the toll it takes on our energy, emotions, and physical well-being. In this episode, Dr Mary Sanders shares how energy medicine and the chakra system can help you reconnect with your inner self, restore your vitality, and reclaim a sense of purpose

• Discover how your energy field (or biofield) influences your health, mood, and resilience—and what happens when it shrinks from prolonged stress.
• Learn how chakras function as an unseen interface between your environment and your inner responses, and why understanding them can unlock deep healing.
• Gain practical grounding strategies for replenishing your energy, reconnecting with the earth, and navigating life transitions or emotional overwhelm.

Press play now to discover how understanding your energy system can be the key to restoring clarity, vitality, and emotional balance in your life.

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KEY POINTS AND TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 - Introduction and episode setup

01:33 - Guest introduction

02:53 - What energy medicine is

04:31 - Chakras as the hidden path to body wisdom

09:43 - Burnout and depletion of the biofield

13:43 - Signs and consequences of a shrunk biofield

19:23 - Practical grounding and reconnection methods

24:43 - Feeling internally disconnected despite success

29:17 - Supporting highly sensitive people

35:31 - Final reflections and closing message

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MEMORABLE QUOTE:

"Relax, open and allow."

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VALUABLE RESOURCES:

https://www.drmarysanders.com/

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Coaching with Agi: https://personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com/mentor

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🎙️ Want to be a guest on the podcast?

Message Agi on PodMatch: https://www.podmatch.com/member/personaldevelopmentmastery

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Personal development interviews exploring key principles of personal development, self improvement, self mastery, personal growth, self-discipline, and personal improvement — all supporting a life of purpose and fulfilment.

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Transcript

Agi Keramidas (0:00)
 If you're burnt out, emotionally drained, or feeling stuck in a life transition, this episode will help you restore your energy and reconnect with your true self. Welcome to Personal Development Mastery, the podcast helping midlife professionals in transition turn uncertainty and pressure into clear direction and confident next steps. I'm your host, Aggie Keramidas.
 Join us every Monday for an expert conversation with a guest and every Thursday for a shorter solo episode where I reflect and share insights and tools. This is episode 558. If you feel like you've lost your spark despite outward success, this conversation will guide you to inner alignment, balance, and clarity.
 Before we dive in, if you are a midlife professional going through a transition, whether you're pivoting or stepping away from a long-term career, I offer one-to-one coaching to help you gain clarity, find direction, and move forward with confidence. To explore this, visit personaldevelopmentmasterypodcast.com slash mentor or just tap the link in the show notes. Now let's begin.
 My guest today is Dr. Mary Sanders. Mary, you are a chiropractor, medical intuitive, and host of the Energy Medicine Podcast. With over 30 years of experience, you are passionate about helping people understand how their energy and emotions shape their health and guiding them to feel more balanced and alive in their own bodies. Mary, welcome to the show. It's a real pleasure to speak with you.

Mary Sanders (2:05)
 Thank you for having me. Sincerely, it's my honor to be here with you to have a heartfelt conversation and to support your listeners as well. Thank you.

Agi Keramidas (2:14)
 I'm looking forward to exploring with you energy medicine, understanding the body wisdom, and by that, I will say specifically the chakras which you teach also. We'll go into that. What I would like to start, because I already said the energy medicine.
 For someone listening right now who are not that familiar or perhaps they're even new to energy medicine, how would you describe what it is exactly?

Mary Sanders (2:53)
 Sure. I appreciate you asking this question because it's really nice to be able to establish a foundation which all of us operate from so that we can extrapolate the information that's necessary for us as individuals. My definition of energy medicine is essentially any modality that will alter or support the biofield that surrounds us.
 Now, let me define what biofield is. It is invisible to the naked eye. Many people believe that this is something that is a modern current trend or something that's new agey. Energy medicine has been with us for years upon years. It is nothing new and it takes on many different definitions depending upon the culture or the background in which a person is from. Science is now proving that we have an invisible fluid field that is responsive to the environment in which surrounds us.
 Imagine around you, there is a container, let's say a 18 inch to three foot container that surrounds the front side of your body, the back side of the body, the sides and above and below. There are molecules and electrons that are constantly in motion that are surrounding to the physical environment, thus affecting the physical body. That's the promise of energy medicine.

Agi Keramidas (4:31)
 That's great. It's great to start with something like having something fundamental there. I would like to straight away move and connect what you just described with the chakras, which I read you call them the hidden path to body wisdom.
 Let's start with that. Why do you call them the hidden path to body wisdom?

Mary Sanders (4:58)
 The chakra systems, for those of you that may not be familiar, they are energy centers that reside within the physical body that correspond to various nerve plexuses. That's just a fancy way of saying that within our body, we have nerves that come together that create highways. They branch together and they branch off to the physical body and they control the functionality of the body.
 As I mentioned, energy medicine talks about the biofield, the invisible field that surrounds our physical body. We are assessing, always assessing the information within our physical body and we respond into our environment based upon these energy centers known as chakras. Chakras is a derivative of a Sanskrit word that just means wheel.
 Essentially, these energy centers are a vortex, a wheel of energy that responds to the environment. Then you assimilate that information within your physical body. Then the third responsibility of the chakra system is to express our life force energy back out into the universe or into the field.
 The chakra system is three steps. Number one, it assimilates, receives the information, interprets the information. Number two, number three, it allows you to express your essence.
 That's constantly going on, whether you're conscious of it or not is one thing, but that's constantly going on. You are modulating your energy centers as a direct result as to what is happening in the people, places, things that surround you every single day. As I mentioned, the energy centers or the wheels of energy are connected to the nervous system.
 We know that the plexus of nerves is carrying the information that you receive from the environment and creates a change within the endocrine system. The endocrine gland, I'm not going to bore you with the anatomy 101, but the bottom line is that the endocrine glands are responsible for producing hormones. Hormones, as we all know, changes the chemistry within our physical body.
 It goes up into the brain, the emotions. It stimulates the emotions and neuropeptides within the brain so you then have a coherent response to your environment. I say that the chakras system is the hidden pathway because this happens on a subconscious level, energetic level.
 We can't necessarily diagnose it or trace its path, but it's happening within the internal system at all times in a result of responding to your environment.

Agi Keramidas (7:54)
 Thank you for that. Can I really oversimplify something of what you said because I will say it in my own words. Of course, that is one aspect of the chakras, but not all three that you mentioned.
 Let's discuss about this particular one. The way I will oversimplify is that between the environment, you called it, I will use an example of an external stimulus. I suppose that is part of what you mean the environment.
 In the end, our response to that stimulus, whatever happens externally, somewhere in between that, there is the system of the chakras that will... That's my oversimplification. It's in between that.
 If I'm wrong, if I'm correct with that, I will take it a little bit more in my thinking right now.

Mary Sanders (8:58)
 Well, Adji, I appreciate your ability to simplify this process because in my world, I can get very heady about what the energetic system really looks for, how it operates within the physical body and the complexities of it. At the end of the day, Adji, I want people to have an understanding of the energy system that they can embody, something that makes tangible and practical results in their everyday lives.
 I do think that for this conversation, I would like to talk about, I know many of the listeners have been through various different professional transitions or personal transitions within their lives.
 Now, I can speak to this personally. I went through a pretty big extreme burnout about 23, 24 years into my professional career. What happened to me, I didn't know exactly what was happening to me at the time that I was going through it, but hindsight has shed some light on the fact that when I was in a stress, high demand situation for long periods of time, I was pulling energy from the biofuel through that invisible layer of energy that surrounds us in order to fuel my physical body because my physical body was in overdrive.
 When I talk about the burnout, I'm not talking not only the emotional component, the physiological components, I'm also talking about the energetic components. When I was going through this, the word that I can use that I think all the listeners can relate to is that I felt depleted.
 I use the word flatlined often in my vocabulary. I just didn't have my get up and go. All I wanted to do, my body wanted to rest, but because of the expectations that I had on myself, I never allowed my physical body or my energetic body to replenish itself and so therefore, I depleted my internal reserves.
 When we are under stress, again, I'll make it to where everybody's understanding that we have and can take the energy that surrounds us that is a never-ending supply of beautiful energy and we pull it internally into our physical body in order to meet our stress demands, but over long periods of time, that leaves our energetic biofield depleted.
 Instead of being 18 inches or three feet away from our physical body, it shrinks. It shrinks down next to the physical body and that can actually compromise our emotional body, physical body, energetic body, all of which are intertwined and act as one system collectively.
 My words of wisdom for the listeners is that A, know that you're not alone. You have plenty of resources, Aji being one of them, and that we can help support the foundation of your essence of all aspects of self so that you can replenish yourself and build up your energy reserve so that you can be of service to yourself first and to others secondly.

Agi Keramidas (12:32)
 Thank you for this wonderful explanation. You used the word depleted and I think so many of us can relate to that at a point in life. The word exhausted also came to my mind or perhaps emotionally exhausted, not necessarily physically exhausted or perhaps both.
 You also talked about, and that's what I wanted to ask you next, about the biofield that shrinks. You used that phrase. When that happens, how can one actually, that is what I wanted to ask, how can one understand that this has shrunk and perhaps are there some, what I'm trying to ask is some signs, let's say, especially coming from the outside world or that come as a result of this field being depleted or shrunk?
 I hope my question didn't complicate it so much.

Mary Sanders (13:43)
 No, I think that I can answer this rather directly by sharing my own personal experience and maybe some of the listeners can relate. During the peak of my burnout, I was using chemical substances in order to alter the chemistry within my physical body in order to meet the physiological demands.
 Now, what does that mean? It means that first thing in the morning, I was consuming caffeine to get my energy rubbed up. Then I would use exercise in order to stimulate the neurology to get me even more heightened for my day. Somewhere around the 2 o'clock or 3 o'clock hour, I would start to crash when the caffeine wore off.
 Then I would use sugar to pick myself back up. Then I would get home in the dark hours. Then I would have my dinner. Then I would have my wine. The reason that I would have my wine, again, the sugar and then the alcohol as a depressant so that I could sleep through the night.
 Then I would wake up the next morning and start the whole cycle over again.
 Now, something that I want to do is to make the connection between the emotional component, the emotional body and the physical body. Now, that lifestyle that I was choosing at that time forced me into what is called an adrenal exhaustion. The adrenal glands are a endocrine gland that happen to sit on top of the kidneys.
 The adrenals are responsible for your get up and go. Your sympathetic dominance, your fight, flight, or freeze response. Your body has this ability, obviously, way back when in our ancestors and hunter-gatherer eras, we were taught that if we were confronted with a saber-tooth tiger, that we had the adrenaline to get away from this tiger.
 Now, in today's world, there's no tiger, but we have the demands of the emails. We have demands of social media. We have the expectations of the boss, not to mention the discordance happening in the world. There's lots of stressors, but that doesn't mean that your body doesn't still produce epinephrine, adrenal, norepinephrine, cortisol, DHEA.
 It does so in an unhealthy way. It produces so much of it that your adrenal system starts to shut down. Now, when this happens physiologically, you'll see a secondary emotional response that is related to an energy center located within the deep in the pelvis. That's the first chakra.
 The first chakra is all about your stability, your safety, and your security. If you are in a mode of being driven by fear, or you're having to produce so something bad doesn't happen, or you feel financial scarcity, or you're lacking the overall purpose within your life, you then sink down into the first energy center and begin to, again, I'm going to use the word deplete.
 That's where you're pulling your life force energy or that biofield energy surrounding the physical body. You're over-metabolizing that energy deep within the pelvis. It makes it challenging for you to slow down, to ground, and connect with Mother Earth.
 You're just neurologically, chemically, emotionally driven to be in that overdrive state at all times. That can perpetuate the emotional component of lack, separation, not enough, the big things that make us question why we are doing what we are doing in order to advance when we're wondering if that's really all that life has to offer.
 I'm here to tell you there's so much more that life has to offer. Again, this is another representation, Aji, of the biofield being depleted as a direct result of stress, how it impacts the energy centers, specifically the first energy center within the pelvis, how it connects into the endocrine system, and then how it shifts our neurology and our emotional body. Hopefully, I think that summarizes your question in a way that I think is practical and applicable to the audience today.

Agi Keramidas (18:31)
 As a matter of fact, I want to thank you for being able to be, at the same time, so comprehensive and succinct. I don't know how you manage it, but thank you. I will move because you mentioned grounding.
 You mentioned the phrase connect with Mother Earth. I really want to take one next step on the practical level. Someone that listens to us and is in that situation that you were describing with the adrenal fatigue and all that, how can they ground?
 How can they connect or begin anyway to reconnect with Mother Earth practically?

Mary Sanders (19:23)
 The first thing that I want to say that most of the people listening, and myself included, when I was in the peak of my burnout phase, I was running really hard. If somebody would have said to me, hey, Mary, time out. Time out. You need to slow down. It would have felt so counterintuitive.
 The suggestions that I'm going to make today, Aji, to you and to the listeners is to take a time out.
 What does that mean? It means can you connect with your breath? Can you become more aware of the inhalation and the capacity of your breath?
 How does it feel? Does your breath feel satisfying, nurturing, supportive, or does it feel shallow and rapid and short and unsatisfying?
 Once you can physiologically connect to the body and ask the body how it feels, the body will tell you, hey, I'm tired and B, I'm really under-resourced.
 Once you realize that you're under-resourced, please know and trust that the frequency, which is measurable, everybody, the frequency that the earth emulates, that human's resonance, that 7.83 hertz that is available to us is sustainable. It's available to us 24-7, 365 a year.
 The only separation is that there is no separation. You just have to consciously decide that you're going to lower your brainwave frequency, slow down your physical body, and harmonize with the frequency of Gaia.
 Now, science, there's tons of research out there, Algie, as to the physiological benefits of everything from reducing anxiety to reducing inflammation that happens within the physical body just as a direct response to connecting with the earth's frequency.
 So, people say, okay, well, Mary, how do you do that?
 For me, it just started by simply spending more time outside, getting out of the brick-and-mortar structures and getting out into nature.
 Now, most of us love being out in nature, and when we're done with our hike or our exercise, we feel better-resourced, and that's not necessarily due to the exercise. It's due to the energetic exchange with the earth.
 So, maybe you can be barefoot, you know, just take your shoes off and put your feet on the earth, even if it's just for three minutes, or better yet, take a time out when you're out in nature and physically lay down for just a few minutes. Allow Mother Earth to hold you, to caress you, to nurture you, to support you, because that's her job. That's what she wants to do.
 She's ready, willing, and able to receive any discordant energy that you may be carrying around, and she will take that energy and supply you with a fresh demand of something that's more nutrient-dense so that you can supply your body with good stuff.
 So, if you're inclined, if you can't or don't have access to being in nature, maybe you can put your hands in, like, maybe do some soil, get some soil and do some pot, you know, potting with plants. Maybe you can start talking to your plants.
 Maybe perhaps you can sit and get some direct sunlight onto your face. These are different ways that you can utilize the resource of Mother Earth, and then if you're inclined, if you allow yourself to slow down, begin to lean into the idea of meditation.
 And for those of you listening, and I once was in your shoes, I was like, I don't have the five minutes per day in order to slow down and to meditate. You're crazy, lady.
 Life is just too hectic. And for those of you that say, I don't have five minutes, you are the person who really needs 30 minutes a day. You really need that extra, extra time for yourself in order to pull your analytical brain down and connect into the emotional body.
 So, keep it easy, keep it spontaneous, keep it fun, keep it simple, but most importantly, keep it consistent.

Agi Keramidas (24:04)
 That's absolutely great in terms of practical things, and you shared a lot of them there. So, I think that's very useful.
 I would like, we talked so far mainly about the category of people that are in this chronic stress situation with the biofield that is depleted, which very often happens when one is in a transition of life, transition, career transition, things like that.
 I would also like to talk about someone else that might not be in such a state of chronic stress and like that.
 However, they feel, despite what they have achieved in their life, they feel some kind of internal disconnect perhaps. I'm using that word because often people can't describe what it is, but they know that there's something missing inside, despite having ticked all the boxes that constitute success or they expected to anyway.
 Tell us about what difference is there in the biofield and whether that is also a way of perhaps utilizing it to get some clarity on what they could do. Yeah, clarity, I think I will leave it to that. Clarity is a very precise word.

Mary Sanders (25:52)
 I'd love to answer this question by first sharing my own personal experience because yet once again, I have been through this personally.
 In the peak of my burnout, my husband convinced me to sell my practices and move to the other side of the world. Literally, it happened over probably about a 45-day period. It felt like overnight, I woke up and I was literally on the other side of the world.
 I woke up in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. It was during that time that I went through a very big identity crisis. It was an existential crisis, if you will.
 I didn't know who I was, what I stood for, and really what was my purpose. When you say something felt like it was missing, I was like, how am I supposed to show up in this world?
 In my essence, really was what my question was. Because my biofield was so depleted and because there was discordance within my first energy center, the first tool that I leaned into was my yoga practice.
 I spent a lot of recuperative, regeneration time, a lot of time on my mat, on my mat with the intention of healing myself.
 It took a long while. Because of my wiring and my conditioning, I was pretty impatient. Literally, a year passed and I was like, what am I doing? How am I supposed to show up in the world?
 Two years passed and I'm like, seriously, I need a sign because I need to get moving again. It was at that time that I kept asking and praying for the answers, asking for this guidance.
 And that's what then opened up the doors for me to study positive psychology. Now, that was not the end destination. That was a stepping stone, another direction guiding me into the alignment of my true north or the alignment with the purpose, the highest potential that I have on this physical planet.
 That took time. The best way that I can describe this, Aji, is that I invite you and all the listeners to take the time to fill yourself up.
 You know how when you feel confident, you feel energized, you feel healthy, and you feel more full of yourself.
 And many times people think that being full of yourself has a negative connotation, but in this situation, I'm inviting everybody to fill themselves up with their essence.
 And through meditation, mindful movement, and guided breath work, you literally can begin to inflate your biofield again so that you can electromagnetically attract what it is that you desire.
 It's a necessary start. Post-burnout, during that transitional phase of trying to figure it out, what it all means, and how you're going to show up again, is to resource yourself again so that you can be full of your essence.

Agi Keramidas (29:17)
 Thank you. Let me get your quick wisdom on one more question that I have written here, which I think again it is relevant to many listening, and that's highly sensitive people, let's call them in this way. How can they protect their energy without shutting down, either emotionally or even socially?

Mary Sanders (29:49)
 Yes, highly sensitive people, HSP is what it's called in my world. You are the kind of people that feel more introverted than extroverted. You don't like necessarily being in the spotlight, like it's too draining to be in public environments, or you're not inclined to go to where big crowds are, like big concerts or big parties like that.
 I'm one of these people, and it took me a while to realise that as a highly sensitive person, I was also empathic in absorbing other people's energies. Your question, Ajay, revolves around how do we protect ourselves? And my first answer, okay, my first answer is don't shrink your biofield.
 Now you can in certain situations, but what do I mean by that?
 As somebody who travels internationally quite a bit, I've learned that I don't do well in international airports. And so when I go into international airports, I set the intention to tighten up my biofield so that I feel like my container is smaller.
 I want to become invisible. I want to be small because I don't want to pick up all the energy that's exuding off of people in this transitory place, the airport.
 But if you are a highly sensitive person trying to figure out how to make it in today's world, the invitation that I am inviting you to step into is really make your essence, make it dense.
 So what I mean by that is really know what your original essence feels like and capture that density in that invisible field that surrounds you and your cocoon will become less permeable to other people's energies.

Agi Keramidas (31:59)
 Thank you. That's fascinating. Before I start wrapping things up, and this has been really very insightful, and you also gave, and we are all grateful, many practical things, which is always the intention I have in the podcast to not give theory.
 So before we start wrapping up, where would you like to direct the listener to learn more about you and your work?

Mary Sanders (32:35)
 Sure. I appreciate you asking. And listeners, I just want to say that my website is a living, breathing organism of its own.
 So if you go to www.drmarysanders.com
, which is essentially just my name, drmarysanders.com, and there you will have access to all my upcoming workshops, and my one-on-one services, my podcast, all the offerings that I have. They're all located on that website.
And I also want to let the listeners know that there is an opportunity.
If you're listening today and you're like, hey, I kind of resonate with what this lady's saying, but I don't know as a practitioner if I really need her services or if I'm a good match for her, that's why I have a discovery call where we can connect free of charge to get to know one another, because I believe that everybody should be interviewing their practitioners and those people that they consider to be a resource, and it should be a good match.
And again, if I'm not that person, then I'm going to guide you to people. Aji is one of them. There are a variety of different practitioners that can meet you with where you are today so that you have the necessary tools and resources to be the best version of yourself.

Agi Keramidas (33:57)
 Excellent. And let me also ask two quick questions that I always ask my guests, and the first one is what does personal development mean to you?

Mary Sanders (34:10)
 I don't know if I've ever truly defined personal development, but for me, it's healing. It's healing on the multiple layers that we have access to. It's an ongoing process, and I hope that until the day that my energy decides to leave my physical body, I hope I continue to utilise self-healing tools and personal development.

Agi Keramidas (34:39)
 And hypothetically, if you could go back in time and meet your 18-year-old self, what's one piece of advice you would give her?

Mary Sanders (34:48)
 At 18, I would have advised myself to step in to disconnect from the conditioned responses of the family and step into my own belief systems.

Agi Keramidas (35:04)
 If only we could do that. Now, I can relate very much to what you just said. I want to thank you so much for this wonderful conversation today.
 Mary, I really appreciated it. I want to wish you all the very best with everything you do from now on, and I will leave it to you for your parting words and perhaps a final message to the listener.

Mary Sanders (35:31)
 Yes, I just want to express gratitude. In this state of gratitude, it allows us to open our heart and enter into a magnetic field in order to attract that more of what it is that we desire.
 So I'm very grateful for you, Aji. I'm very grateful for all the listeners. It's been my honour to be able to share space with you today. I know time is precious, and I just want to say thank you.
 So I'll share with you my favourite mantra, and that's something that I carry with me throughout every day, and it's just three simple words. I find myself saying these things repeatedly, and that is relax, open, and allow.

Agi Keramidas (36:19)
 Thank you for listening to this conversation with Dr. Mary Sanders. I hope it has given you a fresh perspective on how your energy and emotions influence your well-being and how reconnecting with your body's wisdom can guide you through stress and life transitions.
 If this resonated, follow the show and share it with one other person who would find it useful.
 Until next time, stand out, don't fit in.