The Art of Healing
Welcome to "The Art of Healing Podcast," where the realms of traditional medicine, energy healing, and holistic well-being converge. Join Dr. Charlyce, a distinguished physician who wears multiple hats as a Reiki Master and Functional Medicine physician, on a transformative journey toward optimal health.
In each episode, Dr. Charlyce explores the profound intersection of Reiki, meditation, Functional Medicine, and Integrative Medicine. Discover the power of Reiki, a gentle yet potent energy healing technique, as it intertwines with evidence-based Functional Medicine practices. Explore the art of balancing the mind, body, and spirit through the transformative practice of meditation.
Through insightful interviews, expert discussions, and personal anecdotes, "The Art of Healing Podcast" delves into the holistic approaches that bridge conventional medicine with alternative healing modalities. Dr. Charlyce's goal is to empower you with knowledge, inspire self-discovery, and guide you on a path to comprehensive well-being.
Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or a curious beginner, this podcast invites you to embrace a holistic perspective on health. Tune in and embark on a journey of healing, self-discovery, and empowerment. The art of healing awaits – are you ready to explore it?
This information is for educational and informational purposes only and solely as a self-help tool for your own use. I am not providing medical, psychological, or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems or illnesses without consulting your own medical practitioner. Always seek the advice of your own medical practitioner and/or mental health provider about your specific health situation. For my full Disclaimer, please go to https://healingartshealthandwellness.com/website-disclaimer/.
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The Art of Healing
How The Thymus Shapes Immunity, Hormones, And Healing
What if your immune system could learn to stand down the moment your heart felt safe? We dive into the quiet power of the thymus—nestled behind your breastbone and aligned with the heart chakra—and unpack how this small organ teaches T cells what to attack and what to leave alone. When heartbreak, loss, or chronic stress hits, that lesson blurs, and the body can slip into hypervigilance, shallow breathing, and autoimmune flares. We connect the dots between emotional memory, the heart’s intrinsic nervous system, and the flare patterns many women see during perimenopause and menopause.
Together, we map why adverse childhood experiences train the body to scan for danger and how that pattern can carry into adult relationships and hormone balance. You’ll hear how the heart’s “memory” shows up physiologically, why modern medicine rarely targets the thymus directly, and where complementary practices can fill the gap. We talk candidly about autoimmunity—lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, MS, IBD—and why symptoms often intensify during times of grief or reminders of past harm.
Then we get practical. You’ll learn step-by-step, accessible tools to bring your immune system back toward tolerance: gentle thymus tapping with safety-centered affirmations, heart-focused breathing to lengthen the exhale and engage vagal tone, and simple Reiki-style hand placement to soothe the chest and upper back. We also share compassion journaling prompts that shift the nervous system from self-surveillance to self-support. For women navigating midlife, we outline how shifting hormones interact with stress and why restoring heart-centered safety can reduce flare risk.
Want to go deeper?
Grab our Chakra and Hormone Guide from the show notes and join our community as we prepare for a special immersive experience in early 2026. If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show. Your story might be the spark someone else needs to heal.
Welcome to the Art of Healing Podcast community. This podcast is devoted to helping you find what works on your journey to health and wellness. This podcast is devoted to providing information on many healing modalities. Learn more about:
- Reiki
- Functional Medicine
- Meditation
- Energy Healing
and more!
Learn more about Dr. Charlyce here.
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Healing Arts Health and Wellness
Hello and welcome to the Art of Healing podcast. If we've met before or you have been a member of the community, welcome back. If this is our first time to meet, so nice to meet you, and I'm happy that you're here. Today we are diving into one of the most powerful and most overlooked organs in the body, the thymus. Energetically, the thymus sits at the heart chakra. Physically, it guides your immune system's deepest intelligence. Emotionally, it teaches your body how to distinguish safety from threat. If your heart chakra has ever been wounded through heartbreak, abandonment, loss, or even high periods of stress, your thymus remembers. For many women, especially in midlife, that memory shows up as inflammation, chronic stress, and even autoimmunity. So today we're exploring the heart chakra thymus connection and how it matters for your hormonal and emotional health. The thymus is behind your stermin, sternum or your breastbone, right in the energetic center of your heart. Its main job is to educate the T cells, which are the soldiers of your immune system. The thymus teaches your T cells, part of your immune system, who you are, who you are not, what to attack, and what to leave alone. This means your immune system's ability to tolerate you begins in the thymus. So when we speak about self-love, compassion, and forgiving yourself, we're not being poetic. We're talking about a biological requirement for immune balance. When the heart chakra is blocked, you feel tightness in the chest, breathing becomes shallow, you don't move your air as well as you should, the immune system begins to overreact, and the body becomes hyper-vigilant. This is why many autoimmune conditions flare during emotional trauma. The thymus is listening and it responds to emotional wounds as if they were physical threats. Common autoimmune diseases that may show up like this and may become more reactive during times of stress or reminders of previous trauma include and are not listen not limited to lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, sarcoidosis, autoimmune hepatitis, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, multiple sclerosis. So as you can tell, it's a very long list of autoimmune diseases. Some that are even undifferentiated, but any of those might become worse during times of perceived stress or even a reminder of previous stressors. This is where ACEs or adverse childhood experiences come in. Children exposed to emotional chaos, neglect, physical danger, or unstable environments have a thymus gland that behaves differently. They learn to be hyper alert, they learn that safety is conditional, and they learn to scan for danger. And that pattern can continue into adulthood. It can continue into relationships, into how your hormones interact with each other and your body and your immune system. In a project I've been working on, I write about how the heart remembers when the mind forgets. And there are many studies that actually show that the nervous system within the heart, the intracardiac conduction system, has a great and enhanced memory that can match what the brain is able to do. In modern medicine, we have a lot of treatment targets that are aimed at many organs for a number of reasons. Biochemically, they may be easier targets or just how things have evolved. But we've got medications specifically for the lungs, specifically for the stomach. We have medications specifically for the skin. But in traditional medicine, we don't necessarily have a whole lot of targeted treatments towards the thymus. And even taking a functional medicine approach, there are some things you can do to support the thymus, but not many. So why don't we explore some simple healing practices that we can practice to help support our thymus and also enhance that supportive feeling of self-compassion and self-love, especially in the times that we are living in now. One of my favorites is simply tapping the breastbone or the thymus gently. This is something you can do throughout your day. This is similar to a technique called emotional freedom technique or EFT. So you can use one or two fingers and lightly, repetitively, even a little bit rapidly, tap the thymus if you're feeling overwhelmed. And while you're doing this, you can take in deep breaths and exhale. And this thymus tapping works really well with an affirmation such as I am safe, I am loved, I deserve love. It's a simple practice, you can do at any time. Breathing into the heart is an easy exercise that we should be doing throughout our day, and a good way to unwind at night before bedtime. In breathing into the heart space, all you need to do is be seated upright, taking a deep breath, putting a hand on your heart, and exhaling, and to help with those breaths, inhaling through the belly and envisioning the breath going into the belly and then into the chest. And then I like to practice as I exhale slowly, bringing my focus to where my hand is touching my heart. So if you want to inhale through the stomach, into the chest, and then exhale, see if you can feel some warmth beneath your hand as it's resting gently on your heart chakra. Practicing breathing into the heart, simple exercise. I like to practice that after I've been in a stressful commute, just a few deep heart-centered breaths. If you practice Reiki, Reiki at your heart center is one of the more soothing and gentle ways to nurture your mind, your body, and your spirit. Heart chakra Reiki is really good during times of grief, during times of sadness. For many of us, the holiday season's a reminder of what we have lost and what's no longer in our lives. So by gently channeling some gentle Reiki into that heart center, doing that for about three minutes, really a soothing practice. Even if you aren't a Reiki practitioner, a simple way to practice this is simply placing one hand on your breastplate, and if comfortable, place the other hand sort of horizontal. They don't have to be perfect. You close your eyes and you inhale through the stomach into the chest, and exhale, and we'll practice for a few minutes together. So we'll inhale as we channel a loving universal energy that may flow from the universe, your higher self, an energy of all goodness, and as you exhale, just feeling the hands on the chest, and you might feel something flowing from your hands into your chest and through to your upper back. So inhaling that energy of all healing, all knowing, all good. And then as you exhale, it flows from your hands into your chest throughout your lungs through to your upper back.
SPEAKER_01:And on another minute, just practice on your own if you can. Inhale and exhale, and that energy circulates through your upper back.
SPEAKER_00:And to close that, it's nice to rub your hands together, maybe even take some of the energy and wash it over your face and the rest of your body. That's one of my favorite practices, especially if right now feels more of a time of loss or sadness. And then compassion journaling, which I love journaling, I love a good journaling session, and prompts you can use if you do like to journal, and these will be in the show notes if it's something that you'll want to practice later.
SPEAKER_01:What does my heart deed today? Where can I give myself more grace?
SPEAKER_00:So by practicing these simple heart chakra healing practices, it's a moment of self-compassion, especially in a world that's not always very compassionate. And the biggest thing is when you practice self-compassion, your ability to be present for others, to have compassion for others grows exponentially.
SPEAKER_01:Always start with yourself.
SPEAKER_00:So as we conclude this episode, I do want to make sure that you're aware of a resource that I have called the Chakra and Hormone Guide. We discuss a concept within this downloadable ebook. It's nice and short. You can get it on your phone and review it. The heart chakra, which is one of the seven main chakras, although it's not one of the major hormones, there are hormones that come from the heart chakra, but it's good to understand how having an open and a soft heart, or just tapping into any past history that would put you at risk of not understanding yourself, not knowing that you are safe in your body could change your immune system and your hormone system so that you might be at more risk for autoimmune disease. This link is particularly important if you are a woman who is transitioning into the phase of her life of perimenopause or menopause, because there is a link between this hormonal transition and the tendency to develop autoimmune disease and how this heart chakra can affect the adrenal glands, the pituitary gland, the ovaries, and all of those, leading to disrupted cortisol, and not just mess with some of the obvious things that we think about, such as wait, can we not want menopause or fatigue, but could make your immune system more likely to attack you? So, chakras and hormones guides, it's in the show notes. So I would invite you to get your copy. And also, it's a teaser or preview of a very exciting event that we will be doing all together at the early part of 2026, where we're gonna take a more in-depth journey together. More to come. So make sure you get that ebook. That way I can let you know as we get closer to that event, how to sign up and what to expect. So thank you so much for joining me for today's episode. I am Dr. Charlize. Thank you for listening. Leave a review or comment if you have messages in the uh application you're listening in. You should be able to send me a message, especially if you have questions or if you're interested in working with me. I do take clients for Reiki, I take functional medicine patients. So, in your show notes, if you'd like to connect with me, you'll find me there. Until next time.
