Eager to be Healthy with Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: You’re listening to Be Healthy, Be Eager. Learn how to be happy.

Michael Scott Eger: to the podcast with Michael Scott while being healthy and living life to the fullest. And on this show we have my friend Dorothy Neville.

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: I’m Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville and I am eager to be healthy.

Michael Scott Eger: Now you’re a doctor, right?

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: I am, yes, am a psychotherapist.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay, excellent. We don’t have any psychotherapists here. But we met ⁓ through Bill Corbis group and we also really got to talk at Jenny Drescher’s event where she was one of my earlier guests. And what you had to say at that event really impressed me. So I invited you on the show. So let’s get right down to business. Have you always been healthy?

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: Let’s go.

Michael Scott Eger: creating

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: I’ve always been healthy in the sense that I’ve never really had any long-term diseases, any real difficulties. I’ve had a few surgeries, but other than those little bumps in the road, I’ve been blessed with really great health.

Michael Scott Eger: Excellent. Now the next question is, what do you do to stay happy?

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: The trick for me is doing work I love, having wonderful friends I can laugh and cry and play with, and knowing what it is brings me peace. Because when I’m in peace, I have inner peace in my body, the rest of the world seems pretty darn terrific.

Michael Scott Eger: Excellent and because you are a little bit more seasoned than I am and you’re in excellent shape I must say. Thank you. I’m sure you have done some things to keep healthy would you mind sharing some of them?

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: here. Certainly, I’ve gone through different parts of my life at different stages, doing different ways of exercise. I never grew up in sports, so I’ve never been a sports player, if you will. But ⁓ for years, I lived in the Caribbean and I was swimming two hours every day. Now that I live back here in the United States, I walk every morning with two girlfriends. We walk four miles every morning at 6.30, unless it’s truly torrential rain. or in the middle of the winter, it’s heavy snow. Other than that, even in the winter, we just bundle up with coats and scarves and hats and we walk our four miles every morning. And it’s a joy, you know, when you know what works for you physically in terms of exercise, it’s important to go do it. But I think the biggest thing for many people is finding what you love. And to me, I love the walking because I do it with girlfriends. So it’s a double blessing. get to visit with people I really care about as well as feel really great. Even if I don’t necessarily want to get out of bed in a cold morning, I feel terrific walking with girlfriends and I feel really great about me when I get in the car to come home. And so it’s a gift of knowing what works for you.

Michael Scott Eger: Excellent. Now this is a time that really lets you talk about yourself. What you really accomplished really made me interested in having you on the show.

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: Goodness, have this, where do I begin?

Michael Scott Eger: I know you have quite the resume. You know I bring a lot of different people on the show but your arc is different than most.

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: Thank you. Yeah, I’ve really been blessed in the life I’ve lived. I was a therapist for a number of years, a psychotherapist for a number of years. And then I, after about three or four years was bored and asked somebody, you know, how do I bring more life into my work? And they suggested I study acupressure. And I had a thriving private practice at the time. I was seeing 42 patients a week in psychotherapy and I was teaching in grad school. But my therapy practice, I felt bored in it. And so someone said study acupressure. So I did. And the man I went into Amherst with to study acupressure, then taught reflexology and iridology. And so I studied those. then, for about a year or so, and then I went, he recommended me to… his mentor, Iona Taggarden, who had created ginseng dough, so I became certified in that and actually taught that for a year at the massage school in Newington. And then went on and I spent four years training with Dr. Brennan and studied breath work, LRT breath work, and then hypnotherapy and consecrate and Reiki and eventually had nine modalities of integrative health care that I had become certified in. and thoroughly enjoyed and integrated that into my practice and at a point created my own method of energy medicine. And at the request of some of my patients on the waiting list who knew each other, began to teach it in six week programs of self-healing through the human energy field. And then ultimately they asked me to open up a solid program. I had a two year program at the end of two years. They didn’t want to graduate, so I made it a three year program. And eventually, to make a long story short, I ended up having a four-year program in energy medicine called the Institute of Healing Arts and Sciences. And we became one of the founders of the Integrated Health Departments at some of the hospitals in Hartford and ended up at one point being affiliated with almost 50 hospitals or medical facilities across the country because my students flew in from around the country. and my third and fourth year students required to do medical internships, but they were allowed to do it in the state in which they lived. So I had some preceptors who oversaw the medical internships for those two years in the various states. And it ended up just becoming a way of life for me. And I ended up applying and getting a grant from NIH to research my work, getting grant funding to research my work. and energy medicine working with fibromyalgia patients and I used that actually to pay for my doctorate. I went back and got a doctorate in the psychological and spiritual causes of physical illness. And so I loved my work and I loved teaching it and it was terrific. But after 19 years, I closed my school about three years ago and now simply live that work and teach it but informally no longer in a four year program. So it’s quite a journey we walked.

Michael Scott Eger: Yeah, that is quite an impressive ⁓ academic and professional ⁓ arc you went through. And that’s going to require many shows or many visits to this podcast. It really fleshed out. But I want to go back in history. I think we really should focus on the fact that not everyone started off in the best situations. your childhood was not as easy as mine, where I was a sick kid, but I had a relatively good childhood. You were a healthy person with more challenges in that area.

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: You’re right. I began my life in an orphanage. I was raised in an orphanage for a few years. And then my mother who, my birth mother was in her second marriage. I was the product of an affair, which is why I was placed in an orphanage because good Irish Catholic girls don’t have illegitimate children. So I was placed in an orphanage to be raised there. And my mother and her ⁓ second husband and a brother and a sister, and my grandmother all lived in an apartment in the housing projects in South Boston. And when my father found out about me, my adoptive father found out about me, he decided he wanted to adopt me, that no young girl should be raised in an orphanage. And so against my mother and grandmother’s wishes, he went and adopted me from the orphanage. And I nonetheless was not allowed to live in the home. My grandmother insisted that she would never see an illegitimate child lived in a good Catholic home. And so what my dad would do is get me up at 5.30 in the morning year round, summer, fall, winter and spring, and either put a snow suit on me or a sun suit on me, give me breakfast and put me out in a playpen by the front stoop in the projects. And I would stay there till 9.30 at night when my grandmother went to bed and they would come out and get me and give me dinner and put me to bed and get me out of the house again the morning before she woke up. So she literally never saw an illegitimate child in her home. And then when I was six, she fell down and broke her hip. So I then was able to move into the home and live with my brothers. Now I had other younger brothers as well with my brothers and sister. And so at six, I full time, if you will, in that housing project with the rest of the family, only to find out that he was a very violent sadist. But I spent many of the rest of those years keeping my mothers and brothers and sisters alive. ⁓ But I had many kids in the projects. It’s a different world. The world of poverty. Oftentimes as alcoholism or now drug abuse, you know, involved with it and many of the frustrations of the people who live there can support, you know, extensive amounts of violence, unfortunately. Certainly not in every home, but it’s not extremely uncommon either in that kind of an environment because you’re living in gang land. I gangs were hanging on street corners and gang wars or gang fights were not. and uncommon reality. it’s a very angry, frustrating place for people to live and be confined. So the goal for many is to get out, but certainly not all. For some, can’t imagine ever leaving the project. So everybody’s life is different. But I did choose to get out. ⁓ probably half a third of my freshman class made it to graduation. And once I graduated from high school, I was getting to get married because that’s what you did, a successful girl there, graduated from high school and got married. But I wanted more. So I asked to go to college. My dad didn’t believe in educating girls. And so then I said, okay, I’ll do it by myself and I’ll go to nursing school. And I applied to nursing school and discovered that I went to an unaccredited inner city school and therefore I could never be accepted into any nursing school in the country. because I had unaccredited biology and chemistry. So regardless of having very good grades, it was an unaccredited school program and therefore I wasn’t qualified. And the only other way out I could imagine since college was out, nursing school was out and with my education, the only job opportunities would to be working at a Filene Space Center or Jordan Marsh or something of that idea or being a waitress. I decided another way out was to become a Catholic nun, so I applied to the Sisters of Mercy, only to find out that the Catholic Church does not allow illegitimate children in the convent. So most every one of the doors I tried were closed because I was illegitimate or because I came from a very poor area with an unaccredited school system. And ultimately I told one of my teachers, she asked if I was going to be marrying Michael, and I said, guess. Because I was in love with Michael, said, guess, but I can’t go when there’s no other way out. And told her all the things I tried. And she had a great sense of humor. I said, I even tried the convent at the Sisters of Mercy. And she said, why would you do that? You spend most of your day in detention. I would think by now you’d be tired of us. And I thought, yeah, but if I’m in the convent, they can’t send me to detention, because I would be one of the nuns. So what she did in her loving heart, she wrote to a thousand communities around the globe to see if anybody would be willing to allow an illegitimate child in. And they found one community in Quebec that worked with prostitutes. So they were willing to take a risk on an illegitimate child because they worked with prostitutes and they had the crèche, which was a home. We had 2000 babies from unwed mothers and they thought perhaps I would be okay in that environment. So I entered a French Canadian community and became a Sister of the Good Shepherd. And it was a blessing beyond words. Being inside, not only was I physically safe for the first time in my life, but I also was valued and respected. And it was a whole other way of life. It was a gift beyond words for me. then Mother Superior also, we wore long black habits at that time. Mother Superior decided, that she was going to send me to college. And when I told her I couldn’t get in because my high school was unaccredited, she simply said, sister, if I send you, they will let you in. And she sent me and I got in. And I can tell you, once you have a bachelor’s, nobody really cares where you went to high school. And so getting a master’s and getting a PhD was simply a matter of hard work. to make the money to do that and hard work to get the grades to do that. And when I went back to get my master’s and my PhD, I had children. So it was, you know, the typical thing. I was a single mother. I was married for 15 years, but I became a single mother when my son was in kindergarten and my daughter was in the fourth grade. And so I, at that point then, was in private practice and I started private practice and One of the things you don’t do with me is tell me I can’t do something. One of the dean of the school I graduated from told our graduating class from our masters that we would never have more than 20 patients because there were too many therapists in the Hartford area, so never expect to really work a full-time job. And within three months, I had a six-month waiting list for my afternoon hours that lasted 17 years. I guess I showed him as I did many others that if you truly want something, there’s nothing that stands in your way, but you have to truly want something in order to make it happen. That provides you with spiritual health as well as emotional health. And I truly believe if you’re living your passion, if you’re living what your dreams are, if you’re living your vision, you’re spiritually fed and you’re emotionally fed. And that being the case, you become physically healthy. If you notice, most disease is stress-based. And the higher the stress level, the more vulnerable your immune system is, and then your adrenals and so forth. It impacts you organically and systemically. So if you live your passion, if you live your dreams, if you give yourself the gift of knowing what those are, and then work, not struggle, and not push and bully your way through, but with intention rather than will. with intention work to achieve your dreams, you realize along the way you are healthy on every level. And it truly is a blessed journey that we walk. It’s quite an adventure walking this journey we have here.

Michael Scott Eger: I just want to summarize a little bit of what you said because you were illegitimate child you were sent to orphanage and then ⁓ your father discovered you and Took you took you in is that correct? Correct Okay, and while it wasn’t the most ideal situation especially with with your grandmother who? This really bothers me when When I understand that what Jesus taught us was love, forgiveness and hope. And some people don’t do that even though they believe in it. And your grandmother gave you hard time because you were born out of wedlock. So the whole thing, basically you tried to get into college, that didn’t work out because the school you were going to wasn’t good enough. And you tried many things. Most convicts wouldn’t take someone that was born out of wedlock even though that was something out of your control. wasn’t something you did. You were just born. And you somehow found your way to a convict that was open to the person that you were and that was in Montreal. And it just happened to help a lot of people that lived, ⁓ did some time in prostitution and turned their lives around. Now going through all of that you must have learned something.

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: God willing, we’re always learning new things and developing greater wisdom all the time. Yeah, what I learned truly is that, and I speak of this, you know, at this point in my life, I’m a keynote speaker and I really speak to seizing your dreams with passion and purpose. That if you’re willing to go after your dreams, they are there. The universe, God, whatever your faith system is, supports you. If you’re willing to go after your dreams, they happen. You can’t sort of kind of want a dream and expect it to happen. You have to truly want it. And you don’t sit on the couch waiting for somebody else to make it happen. What do you need to do? And sometimes there are several doors that are closed in your face and they can give you permission to stop or simply be obstacles. You walk around until you find exactly where it is you want to go and how you want to do it. Because this is just, it’s an adventure. And I think constantly we’re being called to grow and become more and more of who we are meant to be, developing more and more of our strengths. And these obstacles are just, you know, permission to stop or things that cause you to really strengthen your conviction that much further while you go forward. It isn’t what we go through in life, Michael. It’s how we deal with what we go through. You know, we can go through this journey as victims, or we can go through this journey enraged about the world not being fair, or we can simply go through the world loving the adventure we’re walking. It’s our choice.

Michael Scott Eger: That’s awesome. So we only we’re going to I think we’re going to have to break this interview down into parts. So we have we have another 10 more minutes. What do you think you learned that was that’s actionable to most people? Because I mean, you dealt with a lot of adversity and I admire that. Thank you. But some people might be in the situation they are in and really could use some advice on how to transcend that themselves.

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: Well, what I would say to you, Michael, and this is what I say in the keynote. Actually, I did a keynote address this past weekend for the Suroptimist, a global organization of women that work to support women and children around the world. And this speaking engagement I did, the talk I presented was Seizing Your Dream. And it really is about supporting all of us, men or women, it’s irrelevant, men, women, children, it doesn’t matter. ⁓ We have to be willing. to have permission to claim our dream. Some people don’t even believe they have a dream. The fact is, our dreams are our soul’s way of talking to us. Our soul gives us this dream. doesn’t come from our head. Your dreams don’t come from your head because intellect doesn’t give you what you need to make a dream come true. You need your passion. You need your vibrancy. It needs to be your truth. So when you look within, what within you gives you passion? You have permission to do that. The next thing you need to do is step out of the box. No longer become who you believe you are supposed to be. Become who you truly are, because every one of us is an exquisite gift. So you can only find that out by listening to your own heart and soul. What exquisite gift is it that you brought into this planet? So knowing that, living out of the box and taking a risk, then you’ve got a dream, you’re willing to live out of the box, become who you are rather than who you should be. Now as you go forward, the first step in claiming your dreams, do not listen to those negative messages. No matter who you are, there will always be somebody telling you that your dream is impossible. Telling you you’re getting too big for your britches, telling you you’re being unrealistic, telling you that doesn’t happen. They know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who tried and it didn’t work. Therefore, they want to protect you and tell you not to do it. If it is your dream, go for it. And what ends up happening sadly is by the time we’re 20, 30, 40, we have so many inner messages, we don’t even need people any longer to telling us it’s not gonna work. We sabotage ourselves constantly. I’m too dumb, I’m too whatever, I’m too fat, I’m too thin, I’m too old, I’m too young, I’m too whatever. And we talk ourselves out of our dreams. And so the first step is eliminate those negative messages. Believe in your dream and go for it. Second step, reassess your values. Never reassess your integrity. Always stay in integrity. But as we grow, our values change. And as you grow and you have a dream and you achieve it and you’re ready for the next dream, you need to reassess your values. Because if your values as such that say all good family members stay in the same town, all good family members stay in the same neighborhood, And yet your dream is to go to New York City and do something, or your dream is to leave town and go to a college far away. Are your values holding you back from where your next dream is taking you? Is it time to reassess your values? Because you may be growing into another set of values. Maybe the next set is really about going forward to the next step to see how you can serve the planet, what you can do more for yourself and for the world around you. Once you’ve reassessed your values, and again, never integrity, take a look at where you’re going next and are you self-sabotaging? If you’re not, you move into the third step of these five steps, and that’s claiming that identity for yourself. I find that most people who don’t achieve their dreams don’t achieve it because they can’t catch the identity. If you want to be, say, a speaker, and yet you can’t imagine yourself speaking, chances are you won’t. But we now know that with biochemistry, if for 90 days you walked around energetically with your shoulders back, your chest out, and you’re standing solid, and you see yourself as a speaker, I am a speaker. I don’t have any speaking engagements yet, but I am a speaker. You own it, you live it, you become it in 90 days. You are transforming your life, you’re transforming your energy, now you’re ready. So after those 90 days, if that’s what you need, some can do it sooner. The fourth step. Look with clarity. And I’m just using speakers as an example. That could be anything. When you want to be a speaker, what do you want to speak about? Who is your audience? Where do you want to travel in your speaking? Get really, really clear about this. Set your intent. This is what I want to do. I want to become a speaker. That is my intention. Therefore, I’m going to train with whoever I need to train with. I’m going to join a speaking organization so that I’m surrounded by other speakers, which reinforces me and allows me to own it. And then I’m going to dedicate myself to making that happen. So the clarity, the intention, and the devotion is all one step in you going forward to making that happen. And then finally, the last step is jump off that cliff. So many people have done this. They’ve eliminated the negatives. They have looked at their values, reassessed, grown into who they’ve become. They now own that next dream. This is their dream. This is who they are. They get it all set up with the picture. And yet there’s one more book they want to read or one more webinar they have to listen to, one more speaker they have to go hear before they’re ready to jump off the cliff. Now that speaker that they go hear references a book. Well, I have to read that one more book before I go. And it goes around and around and around so that they never have permission to hold their nose. jump off that cliff and jump into that next dream and make it happen. If they were to follow these five steps, they would, without a doubt, achieve their dream. Know that it doesn’t always look the way you think it would, but you will have achieved it, no matter what it looks like. ⁓ So always have that dream, that vision, but be open because sometimes there’s something so much greater that shows up. And that dream was really preparing you. for the next stage in your journey. Be open to what life brings you. It’s a wonderful adventure.

Michael Scott Eger: So now I know what our next interview is going to be about. ⁓ Since we got to let you go, would you like to point people to how to find you, how to work with you, ⁓ what organizations you represent that would like to promote?

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: Let me see, how could they find me? They could go to my website, askdrdorothy.com. That’s askdrdorothy.com. My email address would be dorothy at askdrdorothy.com. And my phone number, 860-543-5629. I am currently president of the National Speakers Association here in Connecticut. And I’m on the advisory board of E-Women’s Network in the Connecticut district. And I’m on the advisory board of Devon’s Charm, D-E-V-Y-N-S, a wonderful nonprofit that has been founded to support the special needs children of our active military. So I’m involved with three pretty terrific organizations and I feel very, very blessed.

Michael Scott Eger: Okay, and thank you for coming on to Eager to Be Healthy with great gratitude and love. I’m glad that you’re part of my network.

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: ⁓ thank you so much, Michael. It has been such an absolute joy. It truly has been. And do know that if there’s anybody there who truly wants coaching and mentoring, ⁓ I’m readily available to support them every step of the way. Helping others achieve their dreams really fills my heart and soul. And it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Michael Scott Eger: Alright, and have a, until the next time.

Dr. Dorothy Martin Neville: Thank you. ⁓

Michael Scott Eger: to the Eager to be Healthy podcast. on iTunes. Yes.