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How I Healed from Lyme Disease · Remember Why You Are Here

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How we heal from something will show us the curriculum,
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why we're here and who we are meant to become.
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That curriculum is one that is deeply steeped in working
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in the fields of energetics and spirituality.
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Hello and welcome back to Remember Why You Are Here,
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a podcast for seekers and sensitives where you can relax, receive,
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reconnect yourself, and remember the most important thing of all:
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why you're here. And in this episode today,
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I wanted to revisit a really important recording I made a
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couple of years ago now called "How I Healed from Lyme Disease."
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So this recording was many years in the making.
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It had been a long time that I wanted to talk about my experience with Lyme
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disease.
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I have been in touch with so many people over the years who have
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interacted with this very specific disease and experience
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and was sharing my experience, was sharing what worked for me,
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was sharing the whole arc of my healing journey.
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And I knew at some point I wanted to make an offering where it was
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freely available and all of this information was there.
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The whole story arc of how I healed. And I'm thinking about it now in
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particular because this fall is the 10 year anniversary of when I first
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contracted Lyme Disease.
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You'll hear in the story that I actually contracted Lyme disease twice.
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And so the journey was not a straightforward one,
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but was really powerful. My experience of healing from Lyme
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disease was deeply spiritual in nature,
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and at the same time,
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so much of what I went through ended up teaching
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me how to help guide others through the uniqueness of
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their own experiences.
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Lyme disease is so prevalent in our country,
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is so prevalent in many places in the world.
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It's becoming something that a lot of people are encountering and dealing
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with,
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and I have some deep thoughts about this particular
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teacher,
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what we can learn from this spirochete that causes Lyme
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disease,
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and why I think there's actually so much to learn through
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encountering a big guide,
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a big teacher like this. What I have seen,
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and I'll talk about this more as we get into the recording,
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is that we heal in a
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way that is important for us on a spiritual or
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energetic level.
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How you heal from something is unique because how you heal is showing you who
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you are and who you're meant to become in this lifetime. So even though I
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contracted Lyme disease 10 years ago,
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the journey to healing was not straightforward.
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It did take years.
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And it just feels really good to be able to share about that journey
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here now. Iif you are someone who is dealing with Lyme,
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or someone who's dealing with Lyme,
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but I also think that this story is helpful for anyone who is encountering
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the deep teacher of chronic illness or chronic pain. You'll hear at the end of
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this recording that I am inviting anyone who's feeling called to step into an
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entirely free class that I'm offering called Illness as Teacher.
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This class is still up on my website.
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It is everything that I've gleaned from over a decade of living with chronic
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illness and chronic pain and working with so many others,
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so many sensitives in particular,
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who have been moving through these experiences. In the class,
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I talk about what kind of people end up having illness be a big part of their
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journey, what it means about you.
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The class is here to help you understand who you are,
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to touch into the questions that we all want to know, those "why" questions,
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and really help you orient to this
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powerful way of living,
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this way of living in which we're able to see illness as teachers. So
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I have heard people saying that they've listened to this class again and again,
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that it completely changed the way they saw themselves,
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their life experiences. This class is completely free.
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It's not a lead in for anything else.
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It is literally just an offering that felt really important for my soul to
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create and offer to this world. So if you're interested in that,
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you can head over to my website, asiasuler.com/illnessasteacher,
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and sign up to access that course today. So with that,
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let's get into the story.
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Let's talk about how I healed from Lyme disease.
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Lyme disease is incredibly prevalent in our world right now.
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It is a powerful facet of many of our lives,
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and it is one of the most powerful spiritual teachers I have ever encountered.
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This is my story of how I healed from Lyme disease.
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So chronic illness and chronic pain has been a large part of my life's journey,
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and one of my cycles dancing in that arena was working
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with Lyme disease.
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People have been asking me to share about my journey of healing from Lyme
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disease for many years now.
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And so I'm excited to finally be putting this information out into the world to
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be sharing my story of how I healed from Lyme and what it taught me.
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So the first disclaimer I want to put up here is that everybody's story is
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different. Everyone's healing journey is going to look different.
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And that's the point because one thing that I found through working with
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thousands of people around the world in my client practice and in my teaching
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is that the way we heal from something shows us who we are and
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what we are meant to embody in this lifetime. And because of that,
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everybody's healing is going to look different. And so while I
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am excited to share my story and I hope that it's very helpful,
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I also want to honor the unique individuality of each one of our journeys.
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This story is not intended to treat or diagnose, cure,
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or in any way prevent disease,
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but it is here to support and inspire and hopefully open
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a window into a world of possibilities.
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Now, a little preview before I get into the story of how I healed.
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I did not heal from Lyme disease in a conventional way.
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And what I have seen and what I have heard from many other practitioners who
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work with folks is that most often people who heal from
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chronic Lyme are not healing in conventional ways.
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That unconventional healing in many ways is one of the
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linchpins that helps people heal from this nebulous condition that
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is chronic Lyme disease. I had what I consider to be a
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energetic and spiritual healing from Lyme,
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and I'm going to talk exactly about what that looked like for me.
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And why I'm sharing this is that I
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want whoever's listening to this,
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if you are dealing with Lyme disease or if you are supporting other people
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moving through this,
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to open your mind to the possibilities of the various
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ways in which healing can take place. Because as I said before,
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healing is so unique for each one of us in our lifetime.
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How we heal from something will show us the curriculum,
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why we're here, and who we are meant to become. And for many,
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many people who contract Lyme disease,
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that curriculum is one that is deeply steeped in working in
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the fields of energetics and spirituality. So to start,
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let's ground in a reminder of what Lyme disease actually is.
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We're going to look at it briefly from a scientific lens as well as looking at
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Lyme disease from a mythopoetic lens,
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which I find to be very helpful in understanding this disease. Lyme disease
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is still very mysterious. There's a lot we don't know,
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but we do know that Lyme is caused by an ancient bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi.
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.
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And this bacterium is a spirochete.
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Spirochetes are a very, very old form of bacteria.
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There are different strains, of course, of Lyme,
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but they're all spirochetes and the spirochetes are named for their corkscrew
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shapes.
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These corkscrew shapes are part of what allow it to get into places
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that other bacteria can't, like into our ligaments,
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into our brain, into our nervous system.
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But one of the things that makes this bacterium really special or unique
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is that it is a shapeshifter.
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So Lyme has the ability to shift its shape to get
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into different places and to evade our nervous system or our immune system. So
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the bacterium of Lyme can go from a corkscrew shape and then it can look like a
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cyst like blob, and then it can look like a film.
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And so one of the reasons why it does this is to avoid our immune system.
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Put a pin in this idea of this bacterium as being a shapeshifter because it's
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important. Once this bacteria enters into our bloodstream,
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it will often change its outer surface to avoid immune response,
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and then it can move from the blood into the tissue and into parts of our body
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that other bacteria simply can't.
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Most people know that this bacteria is carried by what we call deer
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ticks or black legged ticks,
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and that's how people are contracting Lyme disease,
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the disease that is named for basically the symptoms that's caused by the
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bacteria. Lyme disease itself is a mysterious
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illness. We're still learning a lot about Lyme.
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As I mentioned,
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this unique shape of this bacteria means it can get into really specialized
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places within our body. It can penetrate cell walls,
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it can cross the blood brain barrier, which is quite unusual for a bacteria.
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It also means because it can cross that blood brain barrier,
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that it can get into our nervous system, our central nervous system,
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and affect the actions of our central nervous system. Because it can also
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break that blood brain barrier,
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it can open us up to be more vulnerable to co-infections,
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which can be a large part of dealing with a journey of
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Lyme disease. Now, once Lyme gets into our system,
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it can rapidly disseminate into areas like our lymph nodes and our tissues.
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And so once it's in those places, it's harder to detect.
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And so that is another part of a lot of people's journey with Lyme is
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that once it's in these harder to detect places,
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it's not as easy to test for. All this said, Lyme disease,
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as we know it has been around for a very long period of time. In Ötzi,
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the frozen caveman found in the Alps 5,000 years ago,
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we were able to identify and see that actually he was afflicted by what we would
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now call Lyme disease. So this bacterium has been around for a very long time.
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Scientists say that likely a predecessor of this bacterium
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that carries what we know as to be Lyme disease that was likely around
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when human beings first came onto the scene.
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So this is a ancient bacteria to
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be in relationship with,
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and likely Lyme disease itself is an ancient disease. Now that said,
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it is very much on the rise in the world right now.
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There's been a huge explosion of this disease in the past 30 to 40
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years.
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And so we are in a moment right now where we are really
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learning from the teacher of this bacteria.
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New statistics stay upwards of 400,000 people in the United States
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are diagnosed with Lyme disease every year.
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And one statistic,
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the CDC says that perhaps up to 15% of the population has experienced Lyme
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disease or has been infected with Lyme disease.
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80 to 85% of people who contract Lyme disease will recover quickly.
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But what that means is about 15 to 20% of people do not,
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or 15 to 20% of people develop what's called chronic Lyme disease.
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And the chronic condition itself of Lyme can be complex because it can mean that
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you still have a Lyme infection.
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It could mean that you have another tick-borne disease or a co-infection,
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or it could be that the original infection caused systemic issues or triggered
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an autoimmune response. Now that we've grounded in a little bit of the
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science of Lyme disease, let's just take a deep breath together
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and look at this bacterium from
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a mythopoetic lens.
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All illnesses have their own consciousness.
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From a shamanic point of view,
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everything on this earth has their own sentience, their own awareness,
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their own consciousness.And the same is true for illness.
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And the same is certainly true for this ancient bacterium.
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The spirochete that causes Lyme disease has its own personality,
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its own energy, and its own ancestry. Now,
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Lyme, I will call it Lyme,
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but really it is this bacterium that we're talking about, right,
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is an ancient shapeshifter.
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It is a being that can reach into the deepest
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levels of our body, our nervous system, our brain.
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It can touch the parts of us that make us feel distinctly like ourselves,
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right?
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And this is one of the reasons why when people develop Lyme disease or chronic
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Lyme,
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there's this sense of not fully being yourself or there's something off on a
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level that's perhaps hard to explain,
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but it's as if you of you has been shifted a little bit.
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And that's because this bacterium is such a powerful shapeshifter,
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it can reach the deepest levels of our being. Now,
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let's look at shapeshifters in mythology. In mythology,
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shapeshifters are sometimes forces of benevolence, sometimes tricksters,
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sometimes they're bringers of danger,
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but they're always incredibly powerful figures.
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Figures that are here to help us transform,
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to bring things into our awareness,
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to help us question reality in a way that is necessary and
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needed. In a psychological context,
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the archetype of the shapeshifter is one that's thought to help us
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bring awareness to the subconscious parts of ourselves,
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the parts of us that we've had to repress or leave behind,
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or that we feel we've lost.
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The shapeshifter allows us to contact these parts again to come back into
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relationship with them. Shapeshifters are catalysts for change.
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They help us respond to this inner desire for
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transformation that we all are carrying around,
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this soul level desire to transform and become the people that we are
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meant to be,
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to shape shift ourselves into the form that has been waiting for us in this
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lifetime. One archetype of the shaman is as
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the original shapeshifter,
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the person whose role it was to contact the
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unseen world,
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to move in and out of shapeshifting in order to bring back
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information from the unseen world. And not only information,
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but healing as well.
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In many traditional contexts - whatever the word was or the word is,
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that is being used for what we now call shamanic healing or a shaman,
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whether it was healer or bruja - often the
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role of this person was to go into the unseen world, shapeshift themselves,
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to move into that unseen world and bring back healing for an individual person
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or for the community.
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So here we see this idea that healing lives in the unseen world and interacting
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with the unseen world.
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And that shape-shifting and interaction with the shapeshifter is required for
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bringing back that healing.
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And I want you to put a pin in this because we're going to return to this in a
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little bit. So for now,
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now that we've seen this bacteria from this mythopoetic,
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energetic, spiritual, and shamanistic viewpoint,
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we can see the whole picture and we can start to move into
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interaction from a different place.
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Now that we have this in our minds and we're sitting with it,
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I'd love to share my story with you and the hopes that perhaps it brings in
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inspiration and healing for you in your life. So I first contracted Lyme
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disease in 2013.
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I was camping in Minnesota at the time,
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and I did not show symptoms until five weeks later.
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I did find a nymph tick on me.
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And when I started showing symptoms five weeks later,
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I was already in what you would call stage three Lyme.
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So by that point, I had severe headaches,
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dizziness, lightning pain, pain in my joints,
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muscle aches in very unusual places.
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I started having arthritis in my joints,
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heart palpitations. I had what I call
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mind-sweltering social anxiety that seemed to come out of nowhere,
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bone deep fatigue.
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My cognitive function had declined very rapidly in a way that I
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couldn't really attribute to anything else.
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I felt like the way I described it was like my brain was a helicopter that
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couldn't land. And really powerful insomnia.
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So I would be up till six or seven in the morning most nights.
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And I knew something was wrong. I mean,
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clearly all those things would say something is wrong,
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but I knew that it wasn't just a normal illness,
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that something was going on with me.
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And I had dealt with cycles of chronic
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illness and pain earlier in my life.
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And so I knew what it felt like when things were really off inside my body,
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and I knew that this wasn't just some run of the mill bug or illness.
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And so I ended up going to the doctor and asking to
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get tested for Lyme because I knew I had been in an area where Lyme disease was
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prevalent, and I had known I found an nymph tick on me.
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And so I went and got the test and I tested positive
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for antibodies. Now, if you're aware of Lyme testing at all,
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you know it's a two phase journey. So I was tested for antibodies,
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and then I was tested with the Western blot, and that came back as negative.
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So from a testing point of view,
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I tested negative for Lyme. In the interim of getting these
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tests, however,
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I got in contact with the group of friends I had been camping with,
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and five or six of them had developed bullseye
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rashes,
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had been tested for Lyme and tested positive and were currently on antibiotics.
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So I had strong anecdotal evidence that I
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was experiencing Lyme even though these tests were negative. Now,
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I want to mention this because the testing for Lyme disease is
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notoriously tricky and it's very easy to get
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misdiagnosed in both directions. I've seen this happen in both directions.
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People who have Lyme not getting diagnosed with Lyme via testing and people who
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don't have Lyme getting a false positive.
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And one statistic I saw in PubMed
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said that 50% of testing misses
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the Lyme. So 50% of tests are not accurate.
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So I'm saying this because this can be a particular journey that people with
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Lyme go on,
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that the testing is not giving them an accurate portrayal of what they're
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experiencing inside their body.
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So trust what you are experiencing. Because I had such strong anecdotal
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evidence that this was likely Lyme disease,
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I requested a month of antibiotics
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and I immediately started antibiotics and an herbal protocol at the
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same time.
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I also sought out the expertise of a Lyme specialist
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and was clinically diagnosed with Lyme during that time. So with this clinical
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diagnosis in hand,
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I was on a month of doxycycline and was also taking herbs at the same
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time. My background is as an herbalist,
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so I had trained as an herbalist.
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I was already practicing with folks at the time that I contracted Lyme disease.
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And so I knew that I wanted to work with
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herbs as well as antibiotics and support myself in that
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way.
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Herbs are really helpful in tandem with antibiotics because they do
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help the antibiotics to cross that blood brain barrier, which is very important.
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And because I already was in what you would consider sage three Lyme at this
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point,
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the spirochetes had already crossed that barrier,
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and I knew that I needed help in that capacity. So I did a bunch of
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different research.
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I did work with what I would call an amended version of
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Stephen Harrod Buhner's Lyme protocol. At the time,
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this was one of the only protocols that was
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just well-known or available. There's more protocols out there now.
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So my whole herbal protocol, what I used, the dosages that I used,
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is on the blog post that accompanies this video.
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So if you're watching this video not on my website,
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then you can click the link below to head over to that blog post.
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You can see exactly the herbs that I took,
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the dosages that I took them in. I say all of this though with the caveat
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that it is really important that you have support when you are in this process,
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that you are consulting with your doctor or your herbalist,
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that my protocol is not intended to treat,
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diagnosed or cure,
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that this is me sharing from my own personal journey of what worked for me.
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And of course,
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remembering that protocols like this are based on your unique symptoms,
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where the bacteria is manifesting in your body,
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what you are experiencing.
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But in the spirit of sharing an
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inspiration,
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that protocol is over on my website if you'd like to check it out. I was on this
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herbal protocol for eight months.
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I was on this herbal protocol for several of those eight months before
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I added in an addition that was really helpful for me.
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And that addition was Teasel root.
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So one of the things that's said about Teasel root is that it's particularly
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helpful for the strains of Lyme that exist in Wisconsin and
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Minnesota.
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And I have found since working with Lyme myself and working with other people
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who have Lyme,
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that doing research and adding in herbs that are specific to where you
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contracted the disease can be a real game changer.
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So that was a real game changer for me because different strains exist in
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different places. So that was a game changer for me to add in this herb that was
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local to where I contracted the disease.
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And I really feel that
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the antibiotics did an okay job.
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I think they took the population down somewhat.
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The herbs continued that good work,
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but I was still very much in the throes
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of having this disease.
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And through working with this clinical Lyme
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specialist, she recommended pulse antibiotics.
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And it was something that I did try,
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although I did not ultimately feel like it was the right thing for me.
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I do feel like the herbs continue to take down the population. So that's
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one of the first things right with Lyme is we're taking down the population
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often of the bacteria in your body,
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and then we're moving towards, normally,
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strengthening our own bodies and systems and moving towards latency.
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So latency is where a pathogenic factor goes
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into basically quiet mode within our body where our body is strong enough to
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handle that disease. One of the things that's said about the bacteria
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that causes Lyme is that it's a bit like chickenpox,
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where it's something that once we contract it, it never leaves our system,
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that there's always probably some aspect of it in perpetuity in our body. Now,
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whether you believe this or not, totally up to you,
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but a lot of the goals normally of therapies, of herbal therapy,
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or otherwise is to take down the population enough and strengthen your body
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enough that population can be small enough that our body can just handle it
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pretty much forever. So at this time,
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I also started acupuncture,
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and specifically I worked with a particular kind of acupuncture called
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divergent treatments.
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This is something that's not normally a part of contemporary traditional Chinese
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medicine or TCM,
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but it is something that is practiced by different acupuncturists.
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It's something that is taught in the acupuncture school here where I live,
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and I find it to be very potent for treating things like Lyme.
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And so I want to mention it here,
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if you are in the midst of this and you're specifically wanting to work with a
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type of acupuncture treatment that addresses this. So divergent acupuncture
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treatments work with the divergent channels,
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which are channels that are created to deal or hold on to pathogenic factors,
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things that we can't fully address when we're experiencing them,
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so that we kind of put them into these divergent channels and decide we're going
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to deal with them later.
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So oftentimes divergent treatments are used to access the
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yuan level of our being in China's medicine,
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which is the deepest level of our being,
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the level of our being that corresponds to things like congenital issues,
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personality disorders, autoimmune issues.
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It's sort of a direct line into our soul, our life's blueprint,
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sort of like the deepest level of your nascent being. This yuan level of our
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being and these divergent channels will often work directly with the
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nascent channels of our body,
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sort of these first channels that were developed in our body,
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things like the brain, the heart, and the nervous system,
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which coincidentally are all places that Lyme disease
27:25
affects. So these divergent treatments can be very
27:30
intense because it's letting everything that has been in latency in your body
27:34
out. So I know for me,
27:36
I started experiencing in reverse chronological order,
27:41
illnesses, chronic pain,
27:43
other maladies that I had experienced in my life, injuries,
27:47
as I did these treatments. So they're very intense,
27:50
but I also feel that they did a lot to bring this disease
27:55
that had become latent in my body out so it could be dealt with and released.
28:00
I worked with my friend Greg Casey of Mystic Dao for these treatments and his
28:05
information as well as all the information about the different treatments I used
28:09
are over on that blogpost on my website if you're interested. Now,
28:13
in the midst of doing all these things, I was also trying to rest a lot,
28:18
eat healthy, drink a lot of water,
28:20
really support my body in being strong enough to address this
28:24
illness. Now,
28:25
I believe all of these things helped me get to a place where I was
28:29
functional. I was able to go to work,
28:34
I was able to see friends sometimes,
28:38
but I was basically just surviving at this point.
28:41
It's like things looked functional on the outside,
28:44
but on the inside I would have frequent collapses.
28:46
Pretty much weekly I would have collapses where I was not functional,
28:50
where I had to be laying in bed.
28:53
And so I knew that this wasn't sustainable.
28:56
I knew that I needed to do something drastic in order to get to the other side
29:01
of healing. And so that is when I decided I was about eight months in at this
29:05
point, and I decided that I was going to do a whole month focused on healing.
29:11
And for me,
29:12
this looked like taking down everything that I did to the
29:16
bare, bare, bare minimum, working the bare minimum of hours, resting,
29:22
doing yoga every day,
29:23
eating a really clean diet and doing a meditation or
29:27
shamanic journey every single day. So shamanic journeys
29:32
are a form of meditation. It's a form of active meditation,
29:36
where you are entering into a visual or an experience with the unseen,
29:41
normally aided by some sort of rhythm. Normally, drumbeat's very common,
29:46
but some people like to get into shamanic trance through dancing, for example.
29:50
And this had been a pathway for me in my life that was really important and
29:54
really helped me connect with my deepest self. So that was my goal. I said,
29:58
okay, I'm going to do a journey every single day for a month.
30:03
So this is what helps me heal from this first occurrence of Lyme
30:08
disease.
30:09
And I really believe that it was this month that was the turning point for me
30:15
of all the things that I did.
30:16
And there were two things in particular that
30:21
really helped me turn the corner: So the first thing was focusing on
30:26
boundaries during this month.
30:29
Boundaries had historically been very hard for me.
30:32
I am what I consider to be an empath.
30:35
I am a highly sensitive person. Highly sensitive people,
30:39
if you're not aware of that term,
30:40
make up about 15 to 20% of the population.
30:43
It is a nervous system trait.
30:46
It means that you are more sensitive to external stimuli.
30:52
And so it can be a beautiful thing. You can really feel the power of a sunset,
30:56
and you can really attune to someone else's feelings,
30:57
but it can also be overwhelming.
30:59
And it often does mean that if you're a highly sensitive person,
31:02
that your nervous system gets overwhelmed more easily. And highly sensitive
31:06
people have sort of naturally porous boundaries. That's sort of how we are born.
31:11
And so I had struggled with boundaries.
31:14
I had struggled with saying no to work projects, to request on my energy,
31:18
to time spent with friends.
31:21
But one of the things that really hit home for me when I really took this
31:24
concentrated time of healing,
31:26
was realizing that when I did what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it,
31:32
I had energy. When... the moment I didn't do that,
31:36
the moment I was like, well, I should do this,
31:38
or this person's expecting me to do this,
31:40
my energy would tank and I'd be in bed again for another 24 hours.
31:44
This was a huge learning lesson for me. When I did what I wanted to do,
31:48
when I wanted to do it,
31:50
I actually had energy and I was healing,
31:54
my body was strong. Now,
31:57
this is a huge lesson for sensitives and empaths,
32:01
and I would learn with time, I didn't know this at the time,
32:04
but looking at the work of Gabor Mate,
32:07
I would learn that this is a specific trait that often
32:12
exists for people who experience chronic illness and disease,
32:16
this inability to set boundaries and this difficulty with setting boundaries and
32:20
this desire to people please.
32:24
So I learned that I was not alone in this,
32:27
and that obviously on a energetic level,
32:30
this was important for my healing. But on a very physical, tangible level,
32:34
not being able to set boundaries for yourself is really stressful for your
32:37
system. And so the first thing that Lyme taught me that was incredibly,
32:42
powerfully,
32:44
life-changing was this ability to set a boundary and to do what I wanted to do
32:49
when I wanted to do it. And the amazing thing about this, at the time,
32:53
I had my own business, I was also still working other jobs.
32:57
But the amazing thing about it was that when I just did that,
33:00
somehow it all worked out.
33:01
Somehow I ended up having time for the things that I thought I'd never want to
33:05
do, like bookkeeping, for example.
33:07
I also realized how often I was saying yes to social engagements that were
33:11
draining my energy.
33:13
So this was a huge revelation for me. And this is
33:16
something that Gabor Mate talks about in his books, and in one of his talks.
33:21
He specifically says this quote that I wrote down,
33:23
because it really was meaningful to me:
33:25
"If you don't know how to say no when you need to,
33:27
your body will say it for you in the form of chronic illness." So what I
33:32
have seen over the years,
33:34
because once I dealt with my iteration of Lyme disease,
33:38
it just felt like people started coming out of the woodwork to find me and work
33:42
with me as an herbalist for their experience with Lyme.
33:45
And I saw over and over and over again,
33:47
there was a very specific pattern for people who contracted Lyme disease and had
33:52
it become chronic.
33:52
And this pattern was that they're often people who are already several
33:57
years down their path. They're already on the path,
34:01
and they're established in certain ways in whatever it is,
34:06
their life, their career, their art, their spiritual practice.
34:10
But there's an aspect of them that is still living their life for other people,
34:13
that is still in this process of
34:18
learning that it's okay to set boundaries.
34:20
And so Lyme often comes in to help teach them how to live for
34:25
themselves,
34:26
and that is the energy that is next needed in their life to reach the next phase
34:30
of their evolution, their spiritual journey, their development,
34:34
their becoming. So Lyme and the spirochete that
34:38
causes it is the ultimate boundary crosser, right? We talked about it:
34:41
it gets into your nervous system, in your brain,
34:43
like the parts of you that you feel like are essentially you, right?
34:47
So it's the ultimate teacher when it comes to boundaries.
34:50
And I see this over and over and over again,
34:51
that it's sensitives and empaths who end up dealing with chronic Lyme
34:56
and being taught, basically by this disease, how to use their energy,
35:01
how they're meant to use this energy in this lifetime to really feed their own
35:05
creativity in their own projects. So I was learning this at the
35:10
same time that I was doing these journeys every single day.
35:13
And for me,
35:16
shamanic journeying is an important way that I connect into my
35:21
deepest self and the unseen world.
35:23
Everyone's going to have their own ways of connecting. So maybe for you,
35:26
it's journaling, maybe it's prayer, maybe it's dance, maybe it's channeling.
35:32
But I've seen over and over again that this spiritual connection is incredibly
35:36
important for healing chronic Lyme.
35:39
One subjective study done at the University of Antioch found that
35:44
100% of the people they interviewed who healed from chronic Lyme
35:49
believed that their spiritual connection was innate
35:54
and essential to their healing. That this sense of spiritual connection,
35:59
awakening,
35:59
and transformation was at the heart of their ability to heal.
36:05
So over the course of this month of journeying,
36:09
I learned so much about myself, about my ability to set boundaries,
36:14
about who I am, about why I'm here,
36:17
and how to use my energy.
36:20
And I went from probably being at a
36:22
50% at that point in my health to an 80%. And to me,
36:27
that felt great. To me, that was like, okay, this is healing.
36:30
And on the other side, I felt like, you know,
36:34
I think I can let go of the herbal protocol.
36:37
I don't think I need to revisit the idea of pulse antibiotics anymore.
36:42
This is totally livable. That said, I did have some things that were...
36:48
I didn't use the word worse, I use the word different.
36:50
Some things were different. So I still had some joint pain,
36:53
I still had headaches, and I still had lower energy. But I thought,
36:56
you know what? I can deal with different. This is just different.
37:01
But a powerful healing took place inside of my body.
37:03
And after that month of deeply connecting to myself and to the healing
37:08
and the teachings that this disease was bringing in,
37:11
I felt like I had reached the other side. So all this said,
37:15
lessons tend to stick better the second time around.
37:19
So a little over a year later, I contracted Lyme disease again.
37:24
Now, the second time that I caught Lyme,
37:27
it was at an event that I was traveling for.
37:32
It was a big, beautiful wedding in Rhode Island for dear friends who I loved.
37:37
And yet I knew looking at my schedule that it was going to be stressful.
37:40
I knew that it was going to be hard for me to make it,
37:43
that it would take a lot out of me.
37:46
And it was the first time I remembered after that big learning
37:51
lesson of Lyme, of realizing the core message for me,
37:54
which was to do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it...
37:58
It was the first time I was doing something that I knew
38:02
was not in alignment with what I needed energetically at that time.
38:08
But I loved these friends. I thought, there's no way I'm going to miss this.
38:11
I'm going.
38:13
And I came back with four nymph ticks and once again,
38:17
contracted Lyme disease. And once again,
38:20
what was really fascinating about this experience was that there was a large
38:23
portion of the wedding party who also got Lyme disease.
38:26
So I had a very strong confirmation that this is exactly what I was dealing
38:30
with again.
38:30
I knew what this was because all the same symptoms came back all over again.
38:35
And I immediately went on antibiotics and immediately started my herbal protocol
38:39
again. And I thought, okay, I've learned this lesson right? I healed once,
38:43
I can heal again, but my health just spiraled.
38:48
So none of these ways of working with it we're
38:53
helping again.
38:54
And I was several months in of both antibiotics and herbs
38:59
when I had a dream. And in the dream,
39:04
a beautiful white-haired woman came out from a log at the edge of the woods,
39:09
and she handed me a rattle and she said,
39:12
"shamanism will heal you from Lyme disease." And I woke up and I was a little
39:17
disappointed because I was like, well, we're going to have the healing now,
39:19
or when is this going to happen? But it was a very, very clear,
39:23
strong message for me. And it just so happened that a few weeks later,
39:28
I had a wonderful friend coming to visit me,
39:30
my friend Julie Travis of Stone Flower Healing,
39:33
and Julie is a shamanic practitioner,
39:36
and I was telling her about this dream that I had and this
39:41
experience, and she said, well, let's do an extraction. If you're up for it,
39:44
let's try this shamonic extraction, and we'll just see what happens.
39:48
And I was game because here I was several
39:53
years down this path of Lyme in one iteration or another,
39:57
having contracted it for the second time, and I thought,
40:01
what do I have to lose? We were doing this ritual,
40:04
and at one point she looked into my eyes and spoke to the
40:09
consciousness of this bacteria,
40:14
and then spoke to me,
40:15
and asked me if I was willing to completely let go of this disease.
40:19
And what I found really shocked me, even though I said yes,
40:23
there was a part of me that was reluctant.
40:26
And I was so surprised by this because on the outside, I would think,
40:29
of course,
40:29
I've been for years in one iteration or another dealing with this particular
40:35
illness and this disease, and I don't want to be anymore.
40:39
But there was a part of me that was holding on.
40:42
And for me, my truth is that,
40:46
because my own awakening experience,
40:50
the thing that led me to the altar of the green world,
40:52
that opened up my spiritual awareness of the world,
40:55
was dealing with chronic illness and chronic pain in my early twenties...
40:58
This was obviously pre Lyme. But because I had had that experience,
41:03
I realized in this session that I had this awareness that
41:07
there was a part of me that was holding onto this because I thought, oh,
41:10
this is how you heal. This is how you evolve. This is how you connect to spirit,
41:14
is through being ill.
41:18
So I had this powerful realization that there was actually a part of me that was
41:22
holding on to this illness in order to learn.
41:26
And at the end of the session, I thought, okay, well,
41:30
that was a powerful realization and if nothing else, that will really help me.
41:35
But within a week, every symptom that I had had for the past two years,
41:39
of these two bouts with Lyme disease, completely evaporated.
41:44
And I was shocked, really completely shocked by this,
41:48
especially after all the different things I tried, all the treatments,
41:52
all the angles and ways of dealing with this. And
41:59
that for me was a complete healing. So that was at the end of 2015.
42:04
And at the time of recording this, it is 2023.
42:09
And I have not had a symptom of Lyme since then.
42:15
And for me,
42:18
looking back on this particular journey,
42:21
I know that what healed me
42:26
was learning how to hold boundaries,
42:29
learning how to connect to the truth of who I am,
42:32
how my energy wants to be used, what's right for me and what isn't,
42:37
understanding that I'm a highly sensitive person and that
42:41
part of my journey, a large part of my journey,
42:43
is to work in the realms of the unseen,
42:46
to work into the realms in the realms that would be called energetic or
42:50
shamanic. And I had already been working in those realms before this time,
42:54
but this was an initiation for me to go deeper. And so for me,
43:00
this is how I healed. And as I mentioned on the other side of this disease,
43:04
I seemed to have people come out of the woodwork who were also dealing with Lyme
43:07
to come work with me,
43:09
both as an herbalist and as an energetic practitioner.
43:13
I did intuitive readings at the time, I did energy healing,
43:16
and I saw several core components and takeaways
43:21
from my own journey as well as the journeys of those who I worked with.
43:25
So these are the core things that I noticed that helped people heal: The
43:29
first thing is for them to work with medicines that they really
43:34
resonated with.
43:36
So some people really felt comfortable with antibiotics and felt like they
43:41
really were good for them, they really worked for them.
43:43
They'd been helpful in the past, and that tended to really help those people.
43:47
Other people were really passionate about herbs or they felt really
43:52
connected to the plants outside their home, and that really helped them.
43:55
Obviously, in my experience,
43:57
connecting on a shamanic level was extremely important for me in
44:02
order to experience this healing.
44:05
So working with medicines that resonate with you.
44:09
And this is really just part and parcel of working with your body,
44:13
working with your body, not against your body.
44:15
This is all an initiation in working with your body,
44:19
so working with the medicines that you trust,
44:22
that resonate for you and your nervous system. The second thing I
44:27
saw in every person I worked with and with my own self is this call to recognize
44:32
who you are. And by and large,
44:36
every person that I worked with was a sensitive person,
44:39
was someone who was ready for the next step of the journey,
44:43
but was also ready to reckon with the ways in which they were using
44:48
their energy for people or things or ventures that were not
44:53
healing for them, that were not here to bolster or support their systems.
44:58
So it was a call to really claim their own energy,
45:03
to really claim their energy in this lifetime, to claim their power in this way,
45:07
and to step into this next phase of their journey through setting these
45:11
boundaries once more. And so this deep
45:16
awareness of energy, where it needs to go and where it doesn't need to go,
45:20
was healing on so many levels for people.
45:23
And so even on a very tangible physical level,
45:27
when we reclaim this energy,
45:29
we then have energy for our body to deal with this
45:33
bacterium, with this ancient consciousness,
45:37
and to be in that negotiation and to be in that healing.
45:41
I also saw time and time again, and I know I've mentioned this several times,
45:45
but it's very important, that healing looked different for each person.
45:48
And that's an exciting thing because the healing that comes in and the
45:52
way that it came in was coming in specifically to show people,
45:56
what is your curriculum in this lifetime? What are you being asked to work with?
46:00
The thing that healed them was the very thing that was calling them forward in
46:05
their own lives.
46:07
And so it was a invitation to go on this journey to
46:12
find out what healing looks like, because that through that journey,
46:15
you find out who you're here to become. Now,
46:19
that said,
46:21
that journey of healing for the folks that I worked with who were dealing with
46:26
chronic Lyme, and obviously for my own self,
46:28
that journey normally is taking people into this deeper terrain of
46:33
working with the unseen,
46:34
of working with these aspects of themselves that are ready to come out and
46:38
flourish, be seen, for these unseen aspects of the world. I mean,
46:43
chronic illness itself is an unseen experience.
46:46
You're working with something that you cannot necessarily see inside of your own
46:50
body, but that is very much there and is very much affecting you.
46:54
And so when we can embrace the idea
46:58
that illness is a teacher,
47:01
that Lyme is a teacher,
47:04
and that these experiences are coming to teach us on an energetic
47:08
level, on a physical level, on a spiritual level,
47:12
that when you embrace them as teachers,
47:16
that is when healing happens. And that at the end of the day,
47:20
was the thing that helped people
47:25
transcend, who I worked with. So this is the
47:29
story of how I healed from Lyme disease,
47:32
and this is the story of what I have seen to be helpful for people who
47:37
are dealing with chronic Lyme.
47:39
This is something that has become central in my own life and in my own practice
47:44
and my own teachings and understandings.
47:47
I have personally lived with chronic illness and
47:50
pain, different cycles of it for over a decade,
47:53
and working with thousands of people around the world,
47:57
and I have seen that over and over and over again,
48:01
when we can approach illness as a teacher,
48:04
this is when we initiate the next era in our life,
48:07
and this is when we initiate our healing. So if any of this is resonating with
48:11
you, if you are experiencing Lyme or another chronic illness,
48:16
I would love if you joined me in my class Illness as Teacher.
48:22
It's completely free.
48:24
It's something that feels like it's a part of my life path and my
48:28
healing to be able to offer.
48:31
It's a live class that's happening on September 28th.
48:35
So if you sign up now, you can join us live. If you can't join live,
48:39
then you can sign up and get the replay later.
48:42
Or if you're listening to this later,
48:43
you can still sign up and receive that replay now.
48:47
I have found this awareness and this framing
48:49
of illness as a teacher to be really powerful for inviting in the healing
48:54
that we're meant to experience in this lifetime. So in the class,
48:58
we're going to talk about what kind of people end up having illness be a big
49:03
part of their journey,
49:04
and specifically what it means about who
49:10
you are and who you're meant to become,
49:11
and specifically the gifts that you're meant to embody.
49:15
Because illness comes in as a teacher.
49:19
And the thing that happens when we embrace illness as a teacher
49:24
is then we embrace the parts of ourselves that are ready to be
49:29
manifest in this lifetime. We embrace our own curriculum and life path.
49:34
And the cool thing that happens when you embrace illness as a teacher is
49:39
you embrace your path as a teacher.
49:43
And I've seen this over and over and over again.
49:45
That illness comes in as a teacher,
49:48
and our job is to embrace that teacher as a student. And when we do that,
49:52
when we can do that fully,
49:54
then we become teachers in this lifetime. The author,
49:59
Caroline Myss, has this really wonderful quote that I think encapsulates it.
50:03
She writes, "when illness is part of your spiritual journey,
50:06
no medical intervention can heal you until your spirit has begun to make the
50:10
changes that the illness was designed to inspire." And what I have seen is that
50:15
folks who are dealing with chronic illness are often being called to this deeper
50:19
path, this spiritual path in their life,
50:22
and called deeper perhaps than they've gone before,
50:24
because often they're already walking that path.
50:27
But there is something here waiting for you.
50:29
And so there's this awareness or this ability to understand who you are.
50:34
And through this class, Illness as Teacher,
50:36
we're going to touch into the question that we all want to know, which is why?
50:40
Why am I experiencing this? Why is this a part of my life?
50:44
Because illness is really hard. It's a really huge big path to choose.
50:49
Powerful souls are the ones who choose it.
50:52
And it's important that we have support along the way.
50:56
And it's important that we have these moments in these times to stop and
51:00
orient together to the teacher and to the teaching that's coming in.
51:04
Because what I have found is that when we can connect with illness as a teacher,
51:09
that's when healing streams in.
51:11
That's when we step into the path that we are meant to walk in this lifetime.
51:17
And that is when the rest of our life begins. So if you're interested in this
51:22
class, there is a link to sign up below.
51:25
You can join me live or listen to the replay at any time.
51:29
I am feeling really excited about being able to offer this
51:34
opportunity for healing and connection.
51:38
And so if this is something that's resonating with you,
51:41
I would absolutely love to see you there. Thank you for listening to my story.
51:46
I hope that it brought in some windows of possibility for you because
51:51
what I have seen time and time again is that healing is
51:55
always possible,
51:57
that there is a deeper benevolence to absolutely everything we experience on
52:02
this planet,
52:03
and that the hardship of the journey is here to open us
52:08
to the deep well of gifts that we carry,
52:12
to the undimmable radiance of our own spirit
52:18
and the powerful lives
52:22
of healing and beauty,
52:25
and learning and becoming that we're here to experience.
52:29
So wherever you are on your healing journey,
52:32
may you find exactly what you need to keep walking that path
52:37
and to heal. Well,
52:40
thank you so much for being here, for witnessing me and my journey,
52:44
and for taking this time for yourself to reflect on your journey,
52:49
the big things you've encountered,
52:51
the big teachers you've encountered in your life.
52:54
You are where you are because you have encountered those teachers,
52:58
you've encountered your own deeper self,
53:00
and you've continued to say yes to your journey.
53:02
And I'm just so honored to be here with you as we all
53:07
continue to say yes to our own unfoldment. So if you have
53:12
comments about this episode or you just want to reach out and share your
53:15
thoughts, head over to AsiaSuler.com/remember, and leave me a voice note.
53:20
I'd love to hear from you.
53:23
And may it be that every bigness you encounter,
53:27
every teacher, every plot foil,
53:31
every challenge, every opening,
53:35
just shows you more and more of this thing,
53:40
this thing that is the most important thing of all:
53:43
remembering why you're here.