Inspiring Conversations with Dr. Christy Soto-Johnson, NMD of Guiding Elements Medical Center, PLLC

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr.Christy Soto-Johnson, NMD.

Hi Dr.Christy, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Since I was about 3 or 4 years old, I knew I was meant to be a healer. Growing up, my parents were nurses (RNs); my mom worked in the NICU (sickest newborns) and delivered babies, while my dad worked in the ICU and ER. I’d stay the night in my dad’s office and go with him to visit the patients when he did rounds and I loved every minute. Both of my grandmothers, whom I spent a lot of time with, practiced traditional indigenous-based folk medicine, which I was most drawn to. By age 5, I knew God was asking me to be a healer and gave me gifts in this light. I’d do what I was guided to do, moving my hands around people or touching certain spots, and people would say they felt better. Their pain would go away, or they could move more quickly.

It wasn’t until high school that I found the critical key to my path and purpose. My mom became deathly ill with mystery illnesses that none of the specialists could figure out, neither what was going on nor how to truly help her. After many surgeries, a suitcase full of medication, and nearly dying in the ER, she reached out to a local homeopathic doctor who also did muscle testing, and my aunt introduced her to a chiropractor who worked with crystals and other energy tools. I’d accompany her and learn about these things I’d never heard of or seen, yet somehow, they felt intuitively known and made sense to me. They helped me understand what I had experienced and witnessed as a child working on others. These new tools and approaches completely turned my mom’s life around. I knew they needed to be a part of my life as well.

As a pre-med student at UC Davis, I became engaged in community clinics, hospitals, and migrant camps, volunteering and learning about medicine and the medical system. What I saw, in addition to my mom’s experience, broke my heart, and I became increasingly unhappy with the conventional medical system. I thought, “Maybe I was wrong about my calling?” and sought more medical opportunities to see if I was on the right track to becoming a doctor. This brought me to a significant understanding – being a doctor and being a healer were different things. You could be one and not the other. I could not see myself conforming to the conventional system and was spending more and more time advocating for patients’ rights. Then, one day, when a medical school admissions committee member told me that people ‘like me’ don’t get in, there was no hope for me, and nothing would change that, I was stopped dead in my tracks. As hard as it was, I sought a new path.

Disillusioned with the idea of becoming a doctor, I poured myself into my second love of being an advocate and highly involved member of underserved, underrepresented, and impoverished communities – my people. This led me to work in public health research in a large hospital setting and cultural anthropology, teaching community college staff about campus racial divides and struggles. I enjoyed my work and saw how the community benefitted, yet I still felt unfulfilled. 6 years later, God showed up in a big way to tell me that the way to my true path was ready, and it was time. I learned about naturopathic medicine and how it was the exact combination of being a healer and a doctor I had been yearning for. Moreover, it existed outside of the conventional system. My heart came alive again. In a matter of 3 months, everything shifted, and I found that every roadblock or barrier immediately melted.

Newly married, my husband and I set off for Arizona for me to begin medical school. There, I resumed my intuitive and bioenergetic healing gifts, learned some new ones, and knew I would have an energy-based clinic like nothing else. That adventure was completed, and I moved to Oregon for a highly challenging residency while my husband stayed in Arizona. After that, I found myself working in Scottsdale, and a year later, at 8 months pregnant, I was let go for ambiguous reasons.

Completely devastated and with nobody wanting to hire a woman prepping to go on maternity leave, I reconnected with a friend from med school, Shanna Bayrd, who was in a similar position. We decided to go into business together and create the kind of healing community clinic we both had envisioned and saw was needed in the world. Like before, setting on the right path, all the blocks and challenges just melted away, and we moved ahead with full force. Guiding Elements Medical Center was born with my newborn in tow, and its growth has been incredible!

Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, has it been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Being a woman of color, first-generation Mexican American, and indigenous has brought many challenges to becoming a doctor, healer, and small business owner. Coming from a rural area where opportunities are not often available for people like me, where we usually are not wanted, and being surrounded by gangs, drugs, and teen pregnancies, it was fairly miraculous that I didn’t fall prey to these circumstances. I was the only one of my siblings and one of a small percentage of my peers growing up who managed to elude their grasp. It was a massive challenge having a 2-week-old child, my first when we signed the lease to our clinic right as the Phoenix summer was set to begin. It felt unreal having to utilize the services I usually was helping others obtain, like food stamps, charity funds to pay for rent, etc., because I had no income, no family in the state to help me with the baby, and my husband’s work was in its slow season. 9 months into our clinic, we were starting to thrive, and then COVID quarantine happened, and we had to close, being a non-critical business (we didn’t do emergency or medical lab services). We lost all of our clientele and had to start over. As determined women, we sought grants and creative ways to grow again. We rebuilt. We grew again! Our baby company outlived massive multi-million dollar companies established for decades. My son was with me at work 5 days a week, 9 am-6 pm, for the first year since, due to COVID, all of the daycares were no longer an option for various reasons. That was a challenge in and of itself!

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about Guiding Elements Medical Center, PLLC?
Please take a moment to read our vision, mission, and values. You’ll get a great feel for our brand and the impact we make as well. Our testimonials speak volumes! https://guidingelementsmc.com/. I created a new type of healing therapy called Quantum Bodywork Therapy. My business partner, Dr. Shanna Bayrd (who goes by Dr. Delight), developed her type of therapy, which is called Sovereignty Therapy. Both are described on our website, and we discuss what led to their creation in our bios. In a nutshell, we are innovators, listeners, observers, and divinely inspired to create what is needed to fill gaps missing in healthcare, community, and life. Our approach is unique in that we work in areas that are not typically done (even in other natural and holistic clinics) and are keys to reversing conditions that are not considered reversible or improvable, or are a total mystery. A patient sees all of us for their care. You get the best of each of us, 4 women with various skills and specialties, medical and non-medical, all working together and thinking about you under one roof. So many things about our approach make us unique, sought after, and a new way of caring. We are developing it into a model and hope to have multiple sites and a teaching clinic soon.

Our view is based on 2 important factors:

1. First, there are 7 components or ‘bodies’ of the whole person, all needing attention, healing, and balance to be fully healthy (mind/mental, physical, ancestral, emotional, spiritual, bioenergetic and pain bodies).
2. Second, we are meant to be in a community, so we deliver our care in a community-oriented way and seek to help build a community using our space as a central hub. We are faith-filled women working together to bring the love and compassion needed. 

Like all of you, we are real people, too, with families and struggles. We, and many others, don’t like having to wait forever for appointments to start because they’re running behind or we need more time to ask all of our questions. Sometimes, childcare falls through, or flexibility and understanding of family demands could be improved. We created this space with all of this in mind. Two of the most common comments we get are “This is not what I expected!” with a massive smile on their face and “Can I move in? I don’t want to leave here. It’s so peaceful.” And sometimes, you may see our kids hanging out at the office! We also believe that quality healthcare, care with integrity, should be accessible to everyone. For this reason, we made payment plan options and are working on creating a scholarship program through a non-profit we’re building for those who cannot even afford a payment plan.

What’s next?
We are always looking for other talented healers and practitioners who resonate with our philosophy and want to join our team, seeking out those seeking community. We are in the process of opening a non-profit, Guiding Elements Outreach Association, to help those who cannot afford the care they need, not just from us but also from other underrepresented healing modalities and practitioners out there. We already have the board formed and are in the process of registering the non-profit! Next year, we plan to move to a larger facility in the same beautiful building with the aim of having a larger community space inside, a teaching kitchen, and other excellent family-friendly services!

Contact Info:

• Website: guidingelementsmc.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guidingelementsmc/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/guidingelementsmedicalcenter/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@guidingelementsmedicalcent7906/featured

Image Credits
 https://www.ashandhoneyphotography.com/, https://jeremytuber.com/ @okoshea O’Shea Arizona Photographer