Latest / Cortisol Coach / Chronic Stress, High Cortisol, and Spiritual Warfare | Why Your Health Struggles Are Bigger Than Science with Tori Jensen

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Chronic Stress, High Cortisol, and Spiritual Warfare | Why Your Health Struggles Are Bigger Than Science with Tori Jensen · Cortisol Coach

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Welcome to the Cortisol Coach Podcast. If you're exhausted, gaining weight,
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losing your hair, your anxiety is through the roof, or the depression and emotional
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overwhelm have completely consumed your life, or maybe you're not showing up
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as the wife and mom you want to be.
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You've spent years never feeling good enough, taking care of everyone else while
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you quietly fell apart, and your body has been keeping score of every single bit of it.
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The chronic stress, hormonal shifts, perimenopause, menopause,
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whatever season you're in, cortisol is making all of it worse.
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And until you heal the root, nothing changes.
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But this show here is about to change that.
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I'm your host, Christine Marie, Holy Spirit-led Biblical Mindset Coach,
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and I have helped thousands of women heal their hormones and cortisol levels.
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Every week, I bring you leading experts, doctors, and coaches who will help
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you heal your body, mind emotions and your spirit so that you can step into
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every kingdom purpose that God has planned for your life so go grab your cup
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of coffee and let's jump in.
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My guest today is Tori Jensen, a registered dietitian, registered nurse,
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speaker, and a writer with over 15 years of clinical experience.
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Tori's story is one that is going to resonate deeply with this audience.
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She was fired from her nursing job for a medical decision that she made about her own body.
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And instead of shrinking back, she took that moment as a sign that it was time to lead differently.
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Today, she helps people unplug from the chaos of conventional medicine and return
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to the rhythm of life that they were actually created for, which is tapping
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into God's given ability to heal our bodies.
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And I have a feeling, Tori and I prayed before this episode,
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that you are in for a treat.
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And Holy Spirit is just going to lead this conversation. So,
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Tori, welcome to the Cortisol Coach Podcast.
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Excited to be here. Thanks for having me. interestingly before we got started
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i had said that i feel like the hill i will die on is i truly believe chronic
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stress high cortisol women's bodies being in the place that they are right now
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and for so many different reasons,
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is truly i believe spiritual warfare and i want to go there with you but before
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we do can you share with us a little bit more about your journey and what led
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here because I want the audience to really know you.
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And then, of course, all of you guys are going to want to follow her on her
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Instagram. But Tori, tell us about you and what led you here.
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Well, thank you for having me.
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It's been a wild ride, you guys. Get your coffee. Settle in.
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You know, we're just going to have a casual conversation over here where my
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hope is at the end you feel really encouraged that there is so much that you can do.
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Because I feel like on social media and just the way that things are going with
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our health and wellness, it makes it feel impossible to actually get healthy and stay healthy.
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For a variety of reasons. We can go into that. I definitely think spiritual
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warfare is a big piece of it because we bear the image of our creator.
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And he desperately doesn't want us to thrive and doesn't want us to be living
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healthy so that we can then go out and fulfill the purpose that he created us for, right?
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So that's in a nutshell. I mean, that is just really what I'm passionate about.
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But by journey, I was an athlete, lifelong athlete, and played soccer in college,
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went to college for nutrition, came out, worked right in a hospital as a registered
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dietitian, and then realized that I wanted to be a nurse.
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So I went back to nursing school, and I really did it for the schedule.
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It's not like because I'm not a hero or anything over here.
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Just I wanted the schedule, and I loved it.
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Fell in love with just being able to care for people and meet them when they're
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at one of their hardest points.
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During COVID, that took on a whole other meaning where I felt like I was showing
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up to a place where no one else wanted to be.
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I felt very at peace about that because of my relationship with the Lord.
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And luckily, my husband, he's a fireman, he's a first responder.
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He was showing up to work at peace during the whole COVID thing because of our relationship with God.
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So I feel very privileged to have people.
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A relationship with my creator that gives me that type of peace,
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that knowing that I am out here leading for him and so that I can continue to
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share with people like, hey, it's okay to be scared about these things, but God is in control.
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So during COVID, I just saw that continually. And then I live in California
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and the vaccine mandates came down and it was really clear from God.
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He just made it super crystal clear that that was not for me,
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that my God-given immune system was more than capable of handling COVID.
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Now, mind you, just from a clinical perspective, if you're interested in this,
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March 2020, all the way to when I was fired, October 2021, I never tested positive
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for COVID. I was in these rooms all day, every day, and I never once got sick.
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So whether that was God's protection, I believe it was a combination of that,
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or it's because I live a really healthy lifestyle doing really simple things
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to fortify my body so that I can,
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be exposed to a virus and have it not impact me the way it might someone who is not as healthy.
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You know, I just like to say that because I feel like we don't.
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We get very sucked into the whole science of everything.
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And that's what happened. And I had a religious exemption that I put in and
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they said that they didn't feel my religious beliefs were...
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Valid, that I didn't actually have sincere religious reasons for not getting vaccinated.
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And so whether or not you agree with that stance is really not the point.
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But the point of my story really comes down to obedience.
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God was like, nope, this is a hard pass for me, for you, for your family.
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And that's where I left it. So how did it feel when you were fired and walking
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away from that because that's a lot.
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Yeah. And I, it's funny, I know a lot of what you and your listeners talk about
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is how your body stores trauma.
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Correct. I haven't talked through that story in a bit, like I just did,
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and I can feel it physically.
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Yes. You know, I can, I'm like right back there feeling the injustice of it
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all and trusting God through all of it.
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But you, you, it's that wound gets ripped open in a new way and then God heals
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it in a new way and you keep moving forward then that wound gets ripped open
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in a new way and it's just like you repeat the cycle I felt so.
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Confident that it was a spiritual battle that we were facing is particularly
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then it was like Satan just showed all of his cards during COVID right yes yeah
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what and again I know some people listening are probably may be
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on the other side of the aisle in terms of where they're out with vaccines.
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But when you think about spiritual battles, attacking your body,
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being divisive between our community, getting people to trust the science,
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like, are we idolizing science now instead of God?
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So you really see that a lot in the medical community too.
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And it's just so acceptable because, oh, we're so advanced.
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We're so lucky to have science. Like, okay, but what if we're putting science
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above God and replacing that and not allowing him to come in and actually work
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and heal us the way he wants to because we're putting limits on him in that
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way. So that's a whole nother piece of this.
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When I left the hospital, I'm such a fighter. I mean, I had my whole life,
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like, just scrappy little soccer player.
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I'm not going to go down without a fight. And so the reason why I have a platform
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in the religious freedom, medical freedom community is because I filmed myself
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being escorted out by security that day.
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Because I wouldn't leave without talking to the person who made the judgment
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on my sincerely held religious beliefs and said, what she wrote for her answers,
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for her exemption, we don't believe them.
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I wanted to talk to that person. And of course, they were never able to put
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me in touch with them. And so eventually they escorted me out with security
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and I filmed it and it went viral because people couldn't believe that that actually happened.
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But I was documenting, This is America.
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We have rights here that you are not afforded in other countries.
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I have First Amendment rights to religious freedom, and this is a gross violation of this.
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So I have been a big advocate for religious freedom since then because I definitely
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took it for granted before that.
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Well, and I asked you that question, and I appreciate you being vulnerable with
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the audience because I think it really boiled down to.
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Obedience, as you mentioned, God's directive on your life, and you followed through and said no.
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Because I think there's a lot of people who maybe they would have made a different choice.
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I feel like in all of these situations, what's the cost?
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Because I feel like the cost spiritually for not being obedient is ultimately disobedience.
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Where has God led you now? Because God will always take our mess and the heartache
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and the tragedies in our life and use it for his glory.
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Even if it's, I believe, even if it was all from our own free will,
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right? Which I'm not saying this was, but he will take all of it and he'll use
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all of it. So tell us where you're at now.
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Well, after that, I started a business because my registered dietitian background
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kind of naturally led me to being able to speak easily to educate people about
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nutrition, where I felt was like a big gap.
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Like, oh my gosh, you guys, there is so much that nutrition can help us with,
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and we just weren't given the tools. We didn't learn this in school.
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And so I really wanted to empower women. And so I started a weight loss business.
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It was all online. And so all my followers were, they knew that I got escorted
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out and they were mostly Christian women who were struggling with weight loss,
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struggling with hormone imbalances.
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And so without any medications, no lab testing, it was really just lifestyle
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and nutrition coaching got just people incredible results.
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But I think the biggest piece here that will probably surprise everyone is that
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the spiritual element of it was more important than any of the nutrition or any of the lifestyle.
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I'm so glad you brought that up, because I feel like that was the true biggest
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piece for me is surrender.
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Surrendering and being obedient.
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I was only able to get to that point because I could hear the voice of God.
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And then that was where I started my healing journey and finally able to lose the weight and,
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you know, the inflammation and get my body to a place where I could start stepping
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into the places where God wanted me.
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I truly believe that healing isn't just for us. Because I feel like a lot of
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women feel like, oh, well, it might take me a long time.
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Walking can be inconvenient, right? Because you put the kids,
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the family, all of the priorities above that. Or maybe drinking your water.
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It's so easy to make excuses as to why.
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Or they felt to me like valid reasons as to why i was not making my health a
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priority but would you really look at the cost what's the cost well the cost
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is actually that i'm not going to be able to fulfill,
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the purpose and plan that god has for my life how do you quantify that yeah
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we've just normalized it,
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that everyone's sick everyone's tired,
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everyone's overweight everyone's fill in the blank.
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And it's like, it's not, it's not possible for me.
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Everyone's in counseling. I'm not knocking any of these things,
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by the way, but it's like, everyone's taking weed gummies at night.
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Everyone's self-medicating with benzos or, you know, popping pills or sugar.
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Sugar is probably like what I think is the most socially acceptable,
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you know, next to alcohol and caffeine.
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Yeah. Those are the things that we use here as I drink my afternoon coffee.
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I'll just let you know, I'm a lot more interesting after a cup of coffee.
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I will just say it gets me, I'm a little, the words just come out a little easier.
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So, you know, all that being said though, we joke about the things that are
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socially acceptable that we are using to numb or distract us from the real healing
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that God wants to do in our life.
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So I would say sugar is the one that I saw most commonly with my clients and
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then, or food in general, food soothing, right?
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Because there's some real physiological, I think food is a gift from God in that way.
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But when we use it in a disordered way, then we're not letting God actually
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come in and do all that work in us because we keep just,
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filling that hole with food or filling that hole with relationships or,
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you know, being busy or filling that hole with coffee or alcohol or.
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Whatever it is.
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And I think the other piece of that that I would love to kind of hear your thoughts
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on too is that we really don't value our physical body. And as Christians,
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I grew up really never talking about my physical body and having this...
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Idea that my body was a bad thing, that, you know, the flesh leads to sin.
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And so we just need to kind of ignore it. And all the fleshly things are bad.
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But that's not what the Bible says.
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And so we have to make this distinction between our physical body,
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which God said was good, and our sinful nature, which are two different things.
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So many thoughts coming forward because, so for me, I grew up mostly like conservative
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Baptist. I think there was a lot of shame covering the body because I feel like
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my parents were most concerned I was going to go out and have sex.
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Right? I mean, I truly feel like, and then I'm, I don't know.
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I mean, who knows? So we just cover the body. We don't talk about it.
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I was very active, you know, in high school and my younger years.
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But I never looked at it that my body was a temple and that it actually is the
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housing for the Holy Spirit.
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Like when you think about it that way, the food you
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eat, the things you watch, the things you listen to are distractions or can
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be distractions so that you can't actually hear clearly what the Holy Spirit is sharing with you.
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And so I didn't look at it like that. I never did because God was the big mean
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guy in the sky and I just need to follow the rules and pay attention and be
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a good girl so that I don't go to hell.
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And I mean, if you just strip away all of the pieces, that's truly, I think, what it was.
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Since then, I've really kind of taken it to this example. If God only gave you
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one car for your whole life.
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Your whole life. Your whole life. One car.
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How would you take, what would you do? Like, oh my gosh, I wouldn't be driving
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around with a cover on it, right?
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Like a little eye hole. You would want to protect it. You would you would think
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about where am I going? What freeways am I going on?
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You would avoid bugs like areas with bugs. You would be so careful.
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And and you wouldn't leave it in the garage for six months, 10 years because
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it wouldn't work when you tried to start it again.
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And that's the car analogy. Actually, it's so funny you brought that up because
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I have a similar analogy that I use with people.
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But yeah, it's like you can't expect your car to work well for you if you don't
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give it, change the oil and you don't put fluids in it and you don't put gas in it.
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You can look at the car and as your body. I mean, it's hard to minimize it to
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that because it's so complex.
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And then you have the spiritual piece. We can't minimize it.
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But to give us like a visual, something that we can actually grasp onto, it's a pretty good one.
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Well, and then you start thinking about how your body operates,
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how your mind operates, how you're when you dampen the voice of the Holy Spirit.
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I mean, if you're married, you take into example, like you're not going to have
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a good quality relationship or the ability to,
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the maximum quality relationship with your spouse, if you're not sleeping well, if you're not,
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it's all just so connected on so many levels that it seems so simple to say
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healing should be your top priority.
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It sounds like you're minimizing it because I feel like it's so complex.
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It's so important. It's so costly.
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You could end up in heaven having a conversation with God and he's like,
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but I had so much planned for you.
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And this is not a judgmental conversation, by the way, and I really like to
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come out and say this. There's a lot of guilt and shame surrounding this,
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specifically for those of us who haven't taken good care of our body because we didn't know how, or.
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We knew how, but we couldn't quite do it.
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We didn't have the tools to put that into practice consistently,
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which is where I think most people are at. And usually it's because we failed
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so many times that it's like, we just can't try again. This is not sustainable for me.
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I'm not going to be that person that's healthy. And skinny is not healthy,
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by the way, not necessarily, right? So that I want to make that distinction
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too, that that shouldn't be our goal.
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Although that is often our goal, which is why the quick fixes come in.
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And there's tools, like tools, you know, we could get talk about GLP-1s and
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Ozempic and all the semi-glutide and all that.
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There's tools, but ultimately doing the really boring things over and over and
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over and over again is actually what's best for your body.
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And they're mostly free and they don't take too long to do like walking and
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drinking water and turning off your lights at night and eating protein at meals
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and limiting your sugar.
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It's like, but we just don't even know where to start so we do nothing.
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And unfortunately the church hasn't done a good job of addressing things.
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The, how the body, the American church hasn't done a good job addressing how
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the body integrates seamlessly with your mind.
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Because if you think about it, if you're sick all the time, you're not going
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to go volunteer at church. You're not going to go, you're not going to go join a ministry.
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You're not going to be out there joyful because you just are trying to get through
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the day. You feel so terrible. You can't even get off the couch to play with your kids.
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How are you going to pour into them? How are you going to pour into your neighbors?
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How are you going to go fulfill the commission if your body's broken.
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So to not address our physical body is a huge miss, but I think to be fair to
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pastors, they were not given the tools there.
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You're just starting to hear people talk about it and be more bold,
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but it really sets off the community because people are like,
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we don't want your health advice.
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It's a complex issue, but really the root of the issue is that we don't value
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our physical body the way that God intended us to.
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I'm so glad you brought that up because I definitely want our listeners to know that this is a journey.
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And I spent so many years, most of my adult life, trapped in a body that I didn't
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recognize that I was numbing with alcohol and sugar.
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Sugar was absolutely my number one drug of choice because it made me feel good.
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When I felt my absolute worst mentally, physically, it didn't matter to me that
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I was going to go eat another cupcake because I was already not happy with my
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body. So it didn't really matter.
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And I couldn't see the consequences. I couldn't see what it was like to be on
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the other side. I couldn't feel what it was like to be on the other side.
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And once you do, it's life changing.
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But it's also a discipline. And I say now, I said, I think recently to one of
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my friends, I was like, I can't, like, my new goal is to be boring, like so boring.
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Like, I just want consistency and boring. And like you said,
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eat the protein and drink the water and be a plant, like go outside,
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get some sunshine, walk, pray
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and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and be mentally clear.
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And I've struggled with anxiety my whole life. I've been diagnosed with so many
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things and given medication for so many things.
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And it was truly, I can go back now and connect pieces of, I didn't actually have fibromyalgia.
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I had a food intolerance to cane sugar, which was my drug of choice.
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And it made my body hurt and have pains just like fibromyalgia.
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Now, I'm not saying that's what fibromyalgia is for everybody,
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right? But like for me, I was given a false diagnosis because of how my body presented.
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Stepping into where I'm at now, I can see all the other pieces.
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And I really hope that's what the listeners gather today is baby steps. Choose one thing.
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Pick, maybe it's water. And then you feel that wind. You feel that excitement.
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And then you can try some, add on something else.
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Yeah, it's interesting you bring up the fibromyalgia. So I'm currently working.
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Let me finish my journey for you guys. So I got fired for not getting vaccinated
21:27
in the hospital, started a weight loss business. And then pretty much overnight
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when the GLP-1 craze started about a year ago, my weight loss business died overnight.
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I was like, oh, OK, God, this is you don't want me doing this either.
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OK, great. What am I supposed to do next? I picked up the phone and called one
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of the physicians that I had been connected with during COVID.
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He was outspoken against the mandates and just very bold Christian man.
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He now lives in Texas. His name is Dr. Leland Stillman.
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So if you also want to follow him, he's StillmanMD on Instagram.
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He specializes in autoimmune disease. I've learned a lot from him just in terms of other things.
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So my background was in nutrition, lifestyle, and then really looking at how,
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these diagnosis we get are off. They're just a cluster of symptoms,
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right? So it's not like you have the virus fibromyalgia.
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Like we can't like test it. You can't say it's just a cluster of symptoms.
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And so many things are that way in autoimmune disease.
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Oh, your labs say this, oh, your symptoms say this. Well, we're gonna try this.
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Immunosuppressant drug. We're going to try this steroid for you.
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And that's basically all we have for you.
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But there's so much more. And really his philosophy on things,
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which I have just seen is so beautiful, is adding the detox piece of it,
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which I didn't really include so much in.
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My framework for how I helped people because I just wasn't fully sold on the
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fact that we need to detox that hard
22:55
in order to get results because my clients were feeling so much better with
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just eating more real food, cutting out a lot of sugar or things that they were,
23:02
you know, intolerant to,
23:04
getting light in their eyes, managing their stress and exercising consistently.
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So those are really the foundations.
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But one thing that he implements for all of his patients is mineral balancing.
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And so that is powerful because it allows your body, it re-nourishes your body,
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and then allows your body to get rid of heavy metals.
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And so unfortunately, a lot of what we're seeing in autoimmune disease is a
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heavy metal burden that you can't test in the blood.
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It's stored in your tissue, specifically your hair. So it's a good tool that
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you can then use to detoxify your body. And so now what happens,
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your body's incredible.
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When your body doesn't have all of these toxic inputs anymore,
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it's released some of these heavy metals, it heals on its own.
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This is incredible, right? You removed sugar, which was assaulting your body
23:51
constantly, keeping you probably on the blood sugar roller coaster and keeping
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your cortisol high, inflammation high.
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Your gut microbiome was just a wreck because the bad bacteria thrives in sugar.
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You had probably some stressful things you were dealing with.
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You removed that one thing, addressed some of your trauma, and now all of a sudden you feel better.
24:12
Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, you know, and without some guidance,
24:17
it's sort of hard to do that.
24:19
It's hard for your listeners probably. They're like, I don't know what to address first.
24:23
Right. That's where we get paralyzed because we hear you go on Instagram,
24:27
you see one influencer say it's all about stress.
24:29
And then somebody else is like, for where I was, a large part of what I talk
24:33
about is blood sugar because it's so powerful. We can get into that if you want.
24:37
But, you know, it's not just blood sugar. It's not just circadian rhythm.
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It's not just getting rid of toxic relationships. It's all the things.
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But really, God helps you figure out what you need to deal with.
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If you pray, I'm telling you right now, if you're listening and you're like,
24:54
I don't even know where to start. You pray.
24:55
God will make it so crystal clear to you through either another person in your
24:59
life, through scripture, through prayer.
25:02
That's the God that we serve. He wants what's best for you. If you're willing
25:06
to listen, then you will get freedom in these areas of your life that you thought you never would.
25:11
So, so true. And for me, it was going to get food sensitivity testing.
25:18
And I realized what are the key pieces of food that I was eating regularly that were causing.
25:26
So much assault on my body, right? And then once you lifted that,
25:30
and right, going to prayer first, because that was how I truly got direction on where to go first.
25:37
And it was a random phone call from a friend. Hey, have you ever thought of
25:40
this? Because they knew how much I was struggling.
25:43
And so it's praying about it and then hearing from God through somebody else,
25:48
through him, through, he's going to make it clear.
25:52
And then taking that first step without having a single clue of how it's going
25:57
to turn out, but just in blind faith and just practicing that faith,
26:02
it just lifted the burden enough.
26:05
It lifted the noise enough so that I could start going, okay,
26:09
now what if I try something else? And I do feel like a lot of mine,
26:14
honestly, was from my earliest childhood, which I,
26:19
those things that's just the moments that the enemy imprints a lie in your body or in your mind or,
26:27
in your environment and you believe it because you don't know because you're
26:30
just a child and your body keeps the score and then you continue looking for,
26:36
proof that what you thought was true which was a lie is true and then pretty
26:41
soon it's your entire belief system.
26:44
Did you do with your clients did you work through was there any way that you
26:49
worked through trauma or spiritual warfare or how did you look at that piece
26:55
we talk a lot about unproductive thoughts,
26:58
and like basically the stories you tell yourself yes because words are powerful but what you say
27:04
so what you say out loud is very powerful powerful and but also what you think
27:09
is very powerful so when you start to write down your thoughts i just told my
27:13
clients i'm like hey just start writing down your thoughts So you're going to
27:16
be shocked at how you talk to yourself.
27:18
You would never speak this way to somebody else. And then we start to notice
27:22
patterns. Like, what are you repeating over and over that's very unproductive
27:27
and maybe like a little, you know, a little version.
27:30
So my, we usually, we have a big lie, like a big under, like a big overarching lie, I would say.
27:36
Mine was that I'm not good enough. I don't know where I picked that up along
27:40
the way, but Satan was like, she's such a high performer.
27:43
She just wants to be, she wants to be good at everything. So if we tell her
27:46
that's never good enough and always keep moving the goalpost.
27:51
We'll just crush her. It was so easy, right? So I can see that now.
27:56
I see that now and I see my tendencies with that and just the way that it pervades
28:02
every little thing. So for example, I have daughters and that's just like,
28:06
that's brutal. They're so brutally honest.
28:09
So one of my daughters, she said like,
28:12
I don't like your dinner. I like dad's dinner better. And I'm just like,
28:15
you know, it's just something in my, the little kid in me is just like,
28:18
I just try so hard. I'm doing all the things.
28:21
It's never enough. Right. And so if that just came off of also me doing a workout
28:26
and I just feel like I, I, gosh, I, why am I so tired today?
28:30
That was never going to be good enough. And you know, I, I got a text from a
28:34
friend that was like, oh, you forgot to bring, you forgot to bring juice boxes.
28:38
Is this cool? Is it here? It's like, oh, of course. It's for us.
28:42
And then maybe I talk to a client and they just are struggling and they're like,
28:46
I don't think this is working. You know, somebody just like,
28:48
oh my gosh, it's not good enough. So
28:50
Okay. That was just like my big lie. And I see, and now I just catch it.
28:55
I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're let's go.
28:59
So I have a framework for my clients and it's based off a book who one of my
29:03
coach soccer coaches growing up, he ended up being one of the most world renowned sports psychologists.
29:08
And he wrote a book called getting to neutral. It is so, so, so good.
29:12
You guys, unfortunately he's passed at this point. His name is Trevor Moen.
29:16
But if you're looking for like an easy read over the summer,
29:19
he tells stories and he really lays it out to put how to put this neutral thinking into practice.
29:24
So neutral thinking is also biblical, which is what I love.
29:27
He's not, I think he was a believer later in his years, but he doesn't base.
29:32
The neutral thinking off of scripture.
29:33
But when I'm reading this, I'm like, oh, basically, we don't want to get bogged
29:38
down in our feelings, right?
29:40
Like we can't like let our feelings dictate our actions. Yes,
29:44
we have feelings. We don't want to suppress them to where we feel it everywhere in our body.
29:49
But God tells us like we should not be living and making choices based on how we feel.
29:55
And so to be able to how this could look in practice is let's say I am let me
30:01
give you the athlete example because you could share this with your kids,
30:03
but then also as a parent. So
30:05
let's say you're shooting free throws and you've just missed six in a row.
30:08
You're like, well, clearly the next one I miss is going to just be like,
30:13
I'm going to miss my seventh. I'm going to miss it. I just missed six.
30:16
But if you shift to neutral and you say, okay, what just happened is.
30:21
Has no effect on what I do next, that's good news. Like, I know I can make a
30:26
free throw. I know the mechanics. So then we just focus on the next step.
30:29
So what are the mechanics of a free throw? What does that actually look like, right?
30:33
And it becomes very practical and you go, oh, so I actually have a framework
30:38
for working through when I feel like I'm tripping and falling and failing and
30:43
all the things that I shift to neutral.
30:45
Hit the pause button is another good way of saying it, to be able to go, what's true?
30:50
Okay, does my whole family hate me? No. Am I a loser? No.
30:54
Am I really trying and I'm tired? Yes. Maybe I'm tired. I'm trying to manage
31:01
my stress and I'm just, I feel stressed again. Okay.
31:04
Well, what is one thing I can do right now to move forward? Maybe I need to
31:07
go take a break from my kids. Maybe I need to go lock myself in the bathroom.
31:12
Maybe I need to go when i'm reaching for doritos to numb my pain because my
31:17
ma I just got off the phone with my mom and she was nasty to me again And i'm reaching for food.
31:22
I hit the pause button. I go what's true? Okay, well my mom and I have conflict
31:27
and food is not going to fix my problems But I will feel better if I go for a walk.
31:31
So I shift to neutral what's true The next right step so really giving action
31:37
to these toxic thoughts that go through our heads that don't line up with how God sees you.
31:43
And when you start to notice them, then it becomes habit. And then you're able
31:47
to say, okay, that's not my identity. My identity is in Christ.
31:50
I am a child of God. I'm not perfect. I'm gonna have hard days.
31:53
Other days are gonna seem easier.
31:55
I'm not gonna let my emotions run my life. I'm not gonna let my emotions make decisions for me.
32:00
I am going to take the next right step and just keep moving forward.
32:03
It is so wild to me that you brought up getting to neutral because prior to
32:09
our recording, I was on a call with somebody.
32:12
And he was telling me the book I should read, and he showed it to me on his
32:15
desk, was that book. No way.
32:17
Yes, I have it written down on my paper right here. I was like, okay, God.
32:22
So, yeah, he was telling me that's the same thing. He said you never would drive
32:26
down the road and be in go and slam into reverse. He said you just wouldn't
32:31
do that. But a lot of us are doing that from feeling successful.
32:35
And I love that you mentioned high-achieving women, because I feel like a lot
32:39
of high-achieving women have chronic stress and have high cortisol and have
32:44
that similar wound of not being chosen and not being significant.
32:50
And wanting to be special.
32:54
And the funny, the wildest thing, Jesus died on the cross because we are chosen.
32:59
He chose us. And yet that's the wound a lot of us think and have because we
33:06
have walked around trying to become something we already are.
33:10
And it's literally wrecking our bodies.
33:13
Well, and it's never going to be good enough either. And that's what Satan just
33:17
loves. He's like, oh, you screwed it up again. Oh, look, oh, you're doing it.
33:21
You're back to your old ways. He just loves to remind us how imperfect we are.
33:26
And we just have to remember that we're not supposed to be perfect.
33:30
That's why Jesus died for us.
33:32
And that there is no perfect. That's the thing.
33:35
There literally is no perfect, but we're walking around here,
33:39
especially the high achieving ones, killing ourselves with these expectations
33:42
that are not real. They're not real.
33:45
It's not even real. And then the goalpost keeps moving because that's what our
33:48
brain does. We're like, oh, not good enough because we've conditioned ourselves to be that way.
33:53
And then the cycle continues. So when you set the expectations realistically,
33:58
it's not exciting, it doesn't get your dopamine all firing, it's just very boring,
34:04
but you start to feel calm in your body again.
34:06
And you start to say, I'm not living, I was addicted to this chaos,
34:12
this adrenaline, this dopamine hits that I get from doing too many things and
34:16
always being running behind and all or whatever,
34:18
you're actually addicted to
34:20
these negative things in your life because chemically they give us that,
34:25
the dopamine hits that we want, even though it's wrecking us.
34:29
So once we recognize it, we can go, okay, I don't want to be addicted to that
34:33
anymore and I'm going to choose different things.
34:35
I remember when we were foster parents and I was literally addicted to dopamine
34:41
and those, you know, that cortisol flush of your body and your body can get addicted to that,
34:47
and when that that chapter was closed we walked away i was like,
34:53
oh my gosh, everything is so boring. There was no dopamine hit anymore of people
35:01
calling, can you take this child?
35:04
It was gone. And I realized that I had become so comfortable living in chaos,
35:12
that my brain looked for chaos to feel comfortable.
35:18
Yeah. And then there's physiological downsides to that, right, for long term.
35:24
But we don't realize it when you're in the middle of it, especially as a healthcare
35:28
worker. My husband's, you know, answers 911 calls all day.
35:31
He and I've been out of the hospital for a while, so I can recognize it.
35:35
I'm kind of more removed. But as a first responder or healthcare worker,
35:40
you're always in an emergency and your brain likes that.
35:44
So you'll just actually manufacture emergencies at home in the safe area,
35:50
even though you're trying to get away from work, but you're right.
35:52
We just can't get enough of it.
35:54
We can't get enough of the chaos. So we add more things and then we're rushing
35:59
out the door and we hate rushing and gosh, no one's on time.
36:02
But it's like we're doing it to ourselves just to get a little hit.
36:05
It's so weird. And I'm going to ask God about that when I go to heaven and be
36:08
like, God, I really wish you hadn't made us like this. Yes.
36:13
You are so right because my husband said, he would say after the whole foster
36:18
care thing, he's like, can you just be happy and be a stay-at-home mom?
36:21
And I was like, absolutely not. That sounds so boring.
36:25
And it was my body shifting and it was a hard shift.
36:30
But here we are, eight years, nine years later, and healing does happen and
36:36
healing can happen. But I truly believe it happens when you seek him first,
36:42
and you ask him like you said ask him what the first next right step is,
36:48
and then take that and take it and ask him to re-roll specific god what am i,
36:54
using and replace in instead of you instead of the real healing that you want
37:00
to bring to me what am i replacing that with what what,
37:04
counterfeit is it food is it relationships is it numbing out of my phone,
37:10
Was it exercise?
37:11
It can be even healthy things, right? So God, what am I, show me what I'm using.
37:18
Instead of you. And I want real healing from you and what that would look like. And he will.
37:22
Well, and I haven't shared this publicly. So my husband went to our house on
37:28
Sunday or I think it was Sunday and he threw away all the liquor in the house.
37:32
My instant response was, but we spent so much money on all of that.
37:37
Why would you throw it away?
37:46
And he said.
37:59
I don't care. Throw it away. It doesn't matter.
38:03
Yeah. And so he was right. There was this weird stronghold that was attached
38:08
to it because could we go out and spend money and buy it all again? Yeah.
38:14
Was it actually me being frugal? No.
38:18
I don't know what it was, honestly. But he sensed that there was some sort of
38:23
stronghold attached to it and we need to remove it.
38:26
And I think what you said there was so important and that's why I'm sharing
38:29
this is there's a counterfeit somewhere and if you know,
38:34
we can have a really really hard week and we can go have one drink and somehow
38:38
it makes it feel a little bit better there's something deeper going on there
38:43
yeah so here's my so I haven't had a drink since July 2021,
38:48
okay and God told me to give up alcohol in March of 2021 and I was like,
38:55
oh God, I'm going on vacation. It's not really a good time for me.
39:00
Okay, I don't have a drinking problem, right? As I said all these things.
39:04
And I was like, I don't have a drinking problem.
39:06
And so in July, 2021, I was really sick.
39:10
And in my desperation, I was praying and he was like, you need to give up alcohol.
39:14
And again, I said, this isn't about alcohol. I mean, this is not a sickness
39:18
that has to do with alcohol. What are you talking about? He's like,
39:20
that's not what I said. I don't know.
39:23
I said, you need to give up alcohol. And I said, okay.
39:26
I hear it twice, like, okay, I'm done. All right. And for me, it was very clear.
39:31
It wasn't like a stop drinking so much, have it on occasion.
39:34
No, it was like a hard pass to be done. And a darkness left me that I didn't
39:39
know I had in that moment when I made that commitment to God.
39:44
So I do believe there is a spiritual stronghold specifically tied to drugs and
39:50
alcohol because they open a portal, open a spiritual side of us and allow darkness in.
39:57
I don't believe Christians can be spiritually possessed.
40:00
I have the Holy Spirit living in me, but I do believe that we can be oppressed,
40:05
spiritually and specifically given based on our choices, things that we allow in our life. So.
40:11
I will never go back because I feel night and day different.
40:16
And I felt also like God ripped a piece of tape off my mouth at that time.
40:20
Now, that was just a few months before I got fired for my religious convictions.
40:24
So interestingly, when I had that change, I had no idea that the two would go together.
40:31
But I became so much more bold in my faith publicly.
40:35
So at work, I was very well known to be a woman of faith and to have a very
40:39
strong relationship with the Lord, not just like say I'm a Christian, but praying for people.
40:44
And I'm not saying that to like toot my own horn. But when I then was,
40:49
my faith came into question, people were like, this is wild.
40:52
You actually, you're actually a Christian. Like you talk about it all the time.
40:56
So it was just one piece of that. But I also then don't think that I would be.
41:01
I had that burden, that spiritual burden lifted from me so then I could go out
41:06
and be more open to what God wants me to do.
41:07
And I could hear him clearly where I couldn't hear him clearly before,
41:11
but it was like clear as day.
41:13
So you might think you're losing something, right?
41:17
I could never give up alcohol or I could, alcohol is one that we don't need, right?
41:21
Food is a little confusing because we need it. I could never give up sugar or
41:27
I could never give up smoking or weed or whatever, whatever it is.
41:30
I could never get up my dirty romance novels, fill in the blank.
41:34
But then God goes, yeah, but there's something, I have something better for you.
41:39
I have something better for you. You don't know what that looks like.
41:41
You're scared because you've never been there and you've been using this alcohol
41:45
as your little pacifier.
41:47
But I have something better for you. Let's go.
41:49
Let's go. It's a little scary for us, but that is what the God that created
41:54
you and loves you and has a purpose for you, that's what he has to offer for you.
41:58
It's like a wild ride that's better than you could ever imagine.
42:03
Wow. This is so, so good. And I pray that the listeners get as much out of this
42:08
episode as I am, because it's truly about connecting with Holy Spirit,
42:14
stepping into obedience surrendering whatever it is that god is asking you to surrender,
42:23
and then watching him do exceedingly more abundant things in your life than
42:29
ever you could think or imagine,
42:32
it's been such a privilege to have you on the show if you were to give one last,
42:37
piece of wisdom or knowledge or advice or anything you've shared so much already
42:42
and i'm so thankful what would you say to our listeners today?
42:45
I would say pray the scary prayer.
42:49
Pray the scary prayer. God, show me what you need to show me.
42:53
I want to be healed from whatever it is that is keeping me from your goodness
42:58
in my life, whether that's physical, spiritual, whatever it is.
43:03
Show me and give me the courage, give me the tools to go do what you're telling me to do.
43:10
Give up the thing or start the thing or have the hard conversation. Pray the scary prayer.
43:17
It's not easy, but it is how God will do miracles in your life where you really
43:22
didn't think they were possible.
43:23
And I think for a lot of your listeners, they're probably there where they really
43:26
don't think they can be free of whatever's holding them back, whether it's,
43:31
past trauma or habits or, you know, toxic relationships, but God can do the
43:39
impossible when you ask Him and invite Him in and you're obedient.
43:44
Amen. You are so right.
43:47
Well, thank you for being on today's episode, and please make sure that you
43:50
check out the show notes. I will give all the information on how you can personally
43:54
connect with Tori, and thank you.
43:57
Just so thankful for having you on the show today.
44:00
Well, thank you for having me. It's really cool what you're doing.
44:02
So I will be following along and look forward to connecting with your listeners.
44:09
Friend, I am so thankful that you are here today. I pray this episode blessed you big time.
44:13
And if it did, would you do me a favor and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts?
44:17
It helps more women just like you find the show. And it may be the very reason
44:21
that somebody else gets the answers that they need.
44:24
I would also love to connect with you personally on Instagram.
44:26
You can find me by searching cortisol underscore coach. That's where I show
44:30
up every single day and send me a DM. I would love to connect with you. I'll see you next time.