EP140: From Physician to Functional Medicine Practitioner with Dr. Penney Stringer

Perfect Practice

In this episode, Sachin interviews Dr. Penney Stringer on her journey from working as a family practice physician to achieving her purpose of bringing healing to groups of people through a mindful functional medicine practice. Listen for insight on following your heart in the flow of abundance as you help clients heal.

Key Takeaways:

[1:01] Sachin introduces Dr. Penney Stringer, a trailblazer and mother of two children. Sachin welcomes Penney to Perfect Practice. [2:22] Dr. Penney Stringer started as a medical doctor and moved into functional medicine. After her residency, she worked in a community healthcare center outside Seattle, Washington, working with people on the margins. The clinic also had an acupuncturist and naturopaths.

[2:54] Dr. Stringer was a family medicine doctor. She referred everyone to the people she knew could help them: a nutritionist, a naturopath, an acupuncturist, and a counselor. There was also a dispensary. At the same time, she did hospital work associated with the clinic.

[3:36] All she had to do was write prescriptions. One day, she felt sick writing a prescription for a medicine she knew was harmful. A young patient with ankylosing spondylitis and bad back pain had been to a naturopath and had been given antibiotics and fish oil for a gut infection.

[4:08] The patient came back to Dr. Stringer and was all better. He didn’t need the prescription for pain medication. After being treated for his gut infection, his autoimmune disease got better. Dr. Stringer questioned how that happened.

[4:26] About that time, she was invited by a naturopathic student to a Jeffrey Bland lecture in 2000, in Seattle. Jeffrey Bland is the “grandfather” of functional medicine. She started going to the free lectures Jeffrey Bland was giving.

[4:57] The first lecture was all about the microbiome and the biochemical pathways. It was what Dr. Stringer had thought she would learn in medical school. She went to her first training not too long after that. She says the rest is history.

[5:28] Dr. Stringer moved to a new town in the early 2000s. A doctor was practicing functional medicine there with a patient waitlist of five years. A nearby hospital funded the functional medicine wellness clinic and Dr. Stringer’s salary at the clinic.

[6:43] Right out of her Institute for Functional Medicine AFMCP course in Boston, Dr. Stringer had a mentor, all the testing, all the supplements, all the patients lined up to see her, and a salary that she didn’t have to worry about. She felt like it was what she was supposed to do.

[8:21] Dr. Stringer says it was a blessed situation in every way. It was all insurance-based so patients could get the best care with two dedicated physicians. The doctors were free to do what they believed in. It was not regular Western medicine. It was functional medicine from the start.

[8:47] The town is a nuclear toxic cleanup site. A lot of the jobs are in the cleanup. She helps with people’s detox and hormone renewal analysis. Her first patient was full of heavy metals, just as she had learned in class. She feels like things are put in our path to see if we’re awake.

[10:45] Dr. Stringer thinks that the key is paying attention. If you want to learn about something, request it from whoever is listening and see how long it takes to show up at your doorstep.

[11:52] Dr. Stringer talks about her sense of presence. She says her dad was a keen observer of nature. He was a biologist and environmental scientist with a doctorate in parasitology from Johns Hopkins. He viewed the world with a beginner’s mind and asked profound questions.

[12:25] Dr. Stringer tells how her father researched the chrysalis of the monarch butterfly, and presented papers on it around the world, all because he wanted to know what happened in the chrysalis. He asked the question and got a grant to find out. He’s now in a documentary.

[13:35] One of Dr. Stringer’s earliest memories with her dad is going in the woods. He would stoop down and turn over a rock and show his children the universe under the rock. He instilled in Penney some of that sense of presence.

[14:01] Dr Stringer spent her junior college year in Spain, studying Spanish literature and she saw daily siestas. When she came back, she learned transcendental meditation. After meditating, when she went outside, she could see every shade of green she had never seen.

[15:05] Dr. Stringer teams up with a master cranial sacral therapist to do a double hands-on with patients. They sit in silence with a patient for an hour.

[15:50] That has given Dr. Stringer so much insight and awareness about the process of healing and being present with another human being and holding the space for transformation, being there with their joy, pain, or release. It’s not always comfortable.

[16:18] Dr. Stringer has to do cranial sacral herself to release what she observes in others. There’s a lot of pain and suffering. Some of us are very in tune with that pain and suffering. It’s important to do your own work to release what you observe so it doesn’t get stuck in your body.

[17:28] If you are not dissipating the energy that’s building up, you feel burned out or don’t care as much. You feel tired. Dr. Stringer notices that her nervous system gets shaky. You could get headaches, upset stomach, or not sleep well, or more, from holding onto other people’s energy.

[20:13] Dr. Stringer worked at the functional medicine office for about five years and then they went their separate ways. She had children. She went back and worked at the community health center so she didn’t have to run a business when her babies were little.

[20:30] Then Dr. Stringer started her own practice. For 18-and-a-half years, she had done functional medicine in the insurance system. With Sachin’s mentorship, she took the leap and jumped out of the insurance system, partially spurred by how the recent pandemic was handled.

[22:00] Sachin has been Dr. Stringer’s only business growth mentor. She has done everything by her heart. She doesn’t do or choose anything based on finances. Dr. Stringer thinks that when you have the right intention, things work out for you and abundance flows.

[22:46] Dr. Stringer says that Sachin has been a very helpful mentor for her, for thinking heart-centered but business savvy. Beyond finances, for Dr. Stringer, the bigger part of abundance is being in nature every day as part of her ability to do her work.

[23:32] Dr. Stringer had another important mentor in medical school at Georgetown, Dr. Jim Gordon, who runs the Center for Mind Body Medicine. He’s a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and an acupuncturist. Dr. Gordon informed me so much about the way Dr. Stringer thinks about healing.

[24:09] Dr. Stringer’s purpose is healing in community. The reason she joined the mentorship was to solidify doing groups and making the community the hallmark of her dynamic and system. Dr. Gordon’s training in mind-body medicine is the basis of all of Dr. Stringer’s groups.

[24:45] Dr. Stringer says Sachin is a great mentor. She feels that learning business and healing are not that different and that they can all be together.

[25:12] Dr. Stringer recommends learning to facilitate mind-body skills groups as an eloquent and beautiful model for being a facilitator but also a participant in the group. It’s mindfulness-based training.

[25:35] Dr. Stringer had another pivotal shift when she went to ECO Conference. It helped her reframe the way she thinks about barriers to healing and how to address toxins and stealth bugs.

[26:17] Dr. Stringer speaks of a book that was pivotal to her, The Nature Fix, by Florence Williams which documents a positive biochemical effect in the brain that PTSD sufferers receive from being in nature for three days. Sachin relates it to the wellness modality of forest bathing.

[29:02] Nature is a powerful teacher and powerful medicine for our sanity. Sachin suggests prescribing forest bathing to your patients and clients. It could be a missing link for a lot of people’s healing journeys.

[29:23] Dr. Stringer notes a recent NYTimes article on the recommendations of nature for health benefits. They recommend spending 20 minutes in nature, three days a week, plus five hours a month of longer hiking, plus going off-grid for three days a year.

[30:19] Sachin is going on a three-day snowshoeing hike with his brother and a guide in Algonquin Park where the lake freezes over. They’ll have a sauna tent and bathe in a hole in the ice in the water. He’s super stoked about it.

[30:55] Being in nature is such an important thing we should all be doing. He hopes what you learn from this conversation is to spend some more time in nature.

[31:41] Dr. Stringer brings up the benefits of fasting. She is on the second day of a three-day ProLon mimicking fast and she feels an amazing shift. It’s amazing to get into a fasting state. It’s phenomenal. Sachin notes that It’s an easy modality to integrate into your practice.

[33:44] Dr. Stringer recommends bodywork; worrying with the subtle energy of the body, as another modality. She sticks to the elemental, basic things.

[39:43] Dr. Stringer thinks medical physicians and professionals pairing up with health coaches is a no-brainer.

[40:12] If you are interested in setting up a group-based program, Dr. Stringer says to follow what interests you and lights you up in terms of the kinds of patients you want to work with, and the setting. She believes that word of mouth is always the best way to grow a practice.

[40:35] If you want to do groups, start doing them. Don’t wait for the perfect system; no one really has the perfect system. Just start doing groups of five, six, or 10 people. It’s an efficient way to teach and to be compensated. Sometimes you have to start with individual people.

[41:23] Dr. Stringer doesn’t have a referral system. That will be the next phase of what she does to reach more people. So far, it’s 90% word of mouth.

[41:36] Offerings of teachings and master classes are a good way for people to know that you know what you’re talking about, that you care, and that your heart’s in it. Dr. Stringer has done master classes for the past three years and it has been great.

[41:58] Now she is doing more in-person things, which are the most fulfilling for her. Getting in front of people and being generous with your offerings to share your knowledge will come back to benefit you. Generosity is reciprocal.

[43:04] Dr. Penney Stringer says this is her year for saying, “yes” to everything. For the next four weekends, she is traveling to visit friends and family and to a breathwork conference with James Nestor.

[44:34] Dr. Penney Stringer learned of the James Nestor breathwork conference from Sachin, who says going to that event was one of the highlights of his life.

[44:45] Dr. Penney Stringer is also planning to go with a functional medicine friend to a nature-based three-day retreat for women in menopause.

[45:09] Sachin thanks Dr. Stringer for spending time with him and his audience today and sharing her wisdom. There are great takeaways of things we can do in nature, with self-care, keeping things simple in our practice, and following our hearts, with the highest integrity.

[46:02] To learn more about Dr. Stringer’s practice, go to PenneyStringerMD.com.

[46:32] Penny’s last words: “Follow your heart and trust that you are in the abundance flow.”

Mentioned in this episode

Perfect Practice Live

Dr. Penney Stringer

Jeffrey Bland

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, by Florence Williams

ProLon

More about your host Sachin Patel

How to speak with Sachin

Go one step further and Become The Living Proof

Perfect Practice Live

[e-mail]

To set up a practice clarity call and opportunity audit

Books by Sachin Patel:

Perfect Practice: How to Build a Successful Functional Medical Business, Attract Your Ideal Patients, Serve Your Community, and Get Paid What You’re Worth

The Motivation Molecule: The Biological Secrets To Eliminate Procrastination, Skyrocket Productivity, and Get Sh!t Done

Tweetables:

“I feel like things are put in our path to see if we’re awake and see if we’re paying attention and I think that can happen with your patients and with your process as a healer and as a business owner.” — Dr. Penney Stringer

“If you want to learn about something, request it from whoever is listening and see how long it takes to show up at your doorstep.” — Dr. Penney Stringer

“I did all this training so I can teach people how to eat and breathe, and touch nature? How is that possible? … That’s what gets people better!” — Dr. Penney Stringer

“I would say if you want to do groups, start doing them. Don’t wait for the perfect system; no one has the perfect system. Just start doing groups of five, six, or 10 people.” — Dr. Penney Stringer

“Generosity is reciprocal.” — Dr. Penney Stringer

Dr. Penney StringerIFM