Carrie Eckert is a mind-body health coach and “mystery illness” mentor at Avocado to Zen. Since overcoming almost a decade of debilitating illness symptoms herself, she now supports others faced with similar health challenges. She experimented for years with various treatments ranging from mainstream medicine to holistic therapies, and ultimately found her answers in what is known as neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to rewire itself.

In addition to her Master’s degree in Health & Wellness Coaching, she has trained with industry-leading professionals, including Martha Beck, Annie Hopper, Byron Katie, and Dr. Joe Dispenza. She shares these mind-body tools with her clients and helps them become empowered to direct their own healing as well.

Carrie currently enjoys introducing people to the incredible healing potential of TRE (Tension & Trauma Releasing Exercises) and sitting in heart-opening sacred cacao ceremonies, both available to her clients via Zoom.

Connect with Carrie and find her new book at:

http://www.AvocadoToZen.com

https://www.facebook.com/AvocadoZen/

https://www.instagram.com/avocado.to.zen/

Head over to https://rebelhealthtribe.com/kit to get a free download of our loaded quick start guide to help you along your healing journey.  If you like us, subscribe, review, and share us with your friends, and come join our Rebel Health Tribe group on Facebook.

A Podcast Launch Bestie production

I am joined today with Carrie Eckerd in Florida.

Carrie, thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, this is going to be fun.

We just had like an hour long chat before we even went on air.

So now I feel like carries my new friends and.

For those who don't know, I'm going to share a little bit about Carrie and

then we're going to get into her story.

Uh, Carrie's a mind body health coach and mystery illness mentor at avocado

to Zen, which is her website, uh, since overcoming half a decade of

debilitating illness, symptoms herself.

She now supports others faced with similar health challenges.

She experimented for years with various treatments ranging from mainstream

medical to holistic therapies, and ultimately found her answers in what

is known as neuroplasticity or the brain's ability to reroute rewire.

In addition to her master's degree in health and wellness coaching, she

has trained with industry leading professionals, including Martha Beck,

Annie hopper, Byron Katie, and Dr.

Joe Dispenza.

She shares these mind-body tools with her clients and helps them become empowered

to direct their own healing as well.

And she, depending on when you're listening to this will already have

published her book called going with my.

How intuition healed my body and my life.

It's not out right now, but it will be when you hear this, because time travel.

So like, did I catch everything in there?

That's quite a journey.

I think so.

All right.

What were you doing in your life when your health went sideways?

Sort of like, that would be the starting point I think is where, where

we can kick off the conversation.

Did you have first off, did you have an interest in

health-related things growing up?

No, not at all.

Not at all.

Okay.

And then, okay.

Yeah, me too.

Uh, the things that were in my cabinet and refrigerator were not the things that

were in my cabinet refrigerator then.

Um, so you were in, uh, pharmaceutical sales and you were a graphic designer.

Yes.

Did you find those?

W were you happy with what you were doing?

Was your life fulfilling to you?

Did you enjoy it?

Um, I did pharmaceutical sales until I had kids, and then we decided I was going to

stay home when we had kids and the type a perfectionist to me, couldn't just sit

home and, and take care of kids, which is a huge and rewarding job in and of itself.

But I didn't see it, that it was quite enough.

So I started my own graphic design business.

I was self-taught.

Started doing stationary design and working really, really hard to

try to overachieve in that area.

But I enjoyed it.

I love that creative side of things.

So who I trained with refers to type a overachievers as the

auto-immune personality type.

And so that's interesting.

You just self-identified like three criteria.

Um, I'm wondering how that shifted.

We'll talk about that later.

Uh, so you were, you had how many.

Two kids.

And you shifted your career to home and we're doing more graphic design.

Uh, what was your first inkling?

That if someone's not right with your health?

Um, I had allergies as a kid growing up, so that's just how I lived.

I always lived kind of congested most of the time and just thought that was normal.

And then I really didn't think much was wrong.

Once I had kids, I started getting colds every few months.

Um, Figured that's what you do when you have kids.

They're constantly bringing germs home.

Um, and my health journey actually didn't start until after we had some

red alarms with my, both of my boys.

It was the end of 2011.

And my oldest son was in first grade at the time.

And he started having this weird cyclical, vomiting, um, thing every

10 days, almost like clockwork.

He would throw up and it was often violently.

He could be sitting in his little circle time and this little first grade class

and just spontaneously throw up and fall over and it could be seizure like, and

it was really alarming to the teacher.

And, um, this went on for months and we, you know, tried to figure

it out with his pediatrician.

We ended up, we had a great children's hospital nearby in Jacksonville, Florida.

So we went every specialist in the children's hospital, trying

to rule out anything from brain to gut and everything in between.

And he kept checking out as normal.

So the pediatrician just said, we think it's just a stomach virus

that he's just hanging onto and it just didn't make sense for me.

So I decided I'd heard some things about elimination diets and

possibly die at being able to help.

So I had heard gluten and dairy were two big ones, two big, bad ones.

And he was, um, Really into his bread and crackers.

So I thought dairy would be the easier one to try first.

So we just, I just did it.

I just eliminated every bit of dairy and his diet and.

He didn't throw up again.

I mean, I think in retrospect, he went seven years without throwing up after

we did that and we were strict dairy elimination for a couple of years.

Um, and then I would say about nine months after that, my younger son started having

the same phenomenon happen that cyclical vomiting for months every 10 days.

And so we did the same thing with him and started in it.

It went away as well, like literally.

It was, it was weird.

It was pretty much that, yeah.

Nine to 11 days that timeframe, but I don't know what I know.

Other than maybe the dairy that they were eating kind of hit its

peak and then they had to expel it.

I've never heard of anything like that before.

So you cut out the dairy with the, both of them.

Yeah.

And they were not lactose intolerant.

We did the lactose-intolerant test with the gastroenterologist.

Um, so it was thrown up since then, like had issues.

Do they eat dairy now?

Are they still no, they do.

Now we do, you know, we try to do it mindfully, not too much.

Um, we still try to do things that are not cow dairy when we can mention, go or goat

cheese and just kind of listen to their bodies, but I've got a 17 year old now.

So.

It's learning how to listen to his own body.

Not listen to mom.

I hear ya.

Um, that's really fascinating.

So like, it just went away.

So you didn't really, um, now I'm like, what was that?

How does that work?

What causes that, but, so that happened.

And then how did that lead into your own?

That was probably pretty stressful in and of itself,

especially when the second ones.

Yeah.

So when it started with the first one, I of course, wanted to join him.

So he wasn't alone.

He was in first grade.

So I eliminated dairy in my diet as well.

And notice that my lifelong allergies diseases.

I was able to breathe again.

I didn't have to have a Kleenex in my pocket at all times.

So I realized we were onto something.

We were not, our genes were not cut out for dairy.

And so, um, I didn't know much about any diets at that time.

And someone had introduced me to this pH diet or some, it

was a raw vegan type of diet.

So that's where I started.

I did that.

Um, Ended up my energy got a lot better for a few months.

I felt great.

And then going into 2012, early in 2012, I hit a wall and my energy

just kind of started depleting and, um, And spring of 2012, my husband

and I went out to the west coast.

We had a great trip out to San Francisco, came home to the kids with a respiratory

virus that was going through our house.

We all caught the respiratory virus and I was the only one who just never recovered.

It was like any other virus to the rest of the family.

But for me, I had a fever for a few days and then just never could get.

My energy back and weeks turned into months, turned into years.

So I don't know what was up with that virus.

If it was just the straw that broke the camel, he felt sick.

Like you were actually, you felt ill, like you were acutely infected is how you felt

for years or just, you got really sick.

And then it was just fatigued.

Tired, exhausted.

Yeah, I felt acutely ill for, you know, 20 or 48, 72 hours.

Uh, just had a fever and chills.

And then after that, I just never could get my energy back.

I didn't feel like I was sick anymore.

I didn't have a respiratory virus.

I didn't have a cough.

I just had this weird fatigue, like mud in my veins, fatigue.

I had to cancel spring break plans.

We were going to have visitors just, I don't know, trudge through the summer.

Then just got on this journey of playing with different diets and reaching out

to different practitioners and doctors.

And that's when it all began.

What kind of diagnoses did you get when you first started going

to doctors and saying like, good.

Cause you probably did link it to the virus.

So you're like, I got sick and then I've just been tired ever since then.

Or was, did, did you make that connection then?

Um, I didn't make the connection to that then.

Um, no.

I don't know why.

I just kept playing with diets at first though.

I went with mainstream doctors.

So I first went to an endocrinologist.

Um, my cycles stopped.

I started having hormonal changes in addition to being tired.

And so I thought, well, this is just gotta be, you know, something

with my hormones is off and my.

PCP was seeing that the thyroid numbers were a little bit off and she

suggested I go to an endocrinologist.

So I thought that would be the solution.

He diagnosed me with hypothyroidism, got me on some Synthroid, which I did not

tolerate even at a quarter of a dose.

And, um, went from there to, just, to becoming my own sleuth.

I had been to it.

I was started going to my PCP every three months and having blood drawn

and having the whole panel done and everything coming back mostly normal.

And.

Really just not having answers.

And I didn't like that.

The endocrinologist didn't have anywhere for me to go other than the Synthroid

that I couldn't seem to tolerate.

It made me manic.

And so I just started researching and diet was really the first place.

It had been so helpful with my kids that I thought maybe I just need to tweak it.

Maybe I just need to change and figure out what's going to work for me.

So I went from vegan, raw vegan, pH type diet.

All the way to the other end of the spectrum into a gaps, diet, and,

and reached out and found a gaps practitioner who helped me through

that remotely and get so gap gaps.

Did that shift things for you at all?

Nothing shifted anything.

Oh, so you did a lot of diets trying to shift it and this fatigue, I mean,

was it just feeling tired all the time?

Like you need to go to sleep or was it like a physical, my body can't

do things kind of fatigue or both.

It was both, it was a mind fatigue.

It was the brain fog.

It was the.

Just heaviness on the head, like this pressure coming down,

but it was also a body fatigue.

Like I said, where it felt like mud in my veins.

Like there were months there where if my husband was out of town, I couldn't

even put my kids to bed upstairs.

I would have my, at this point he was probably second grader.

Um, put my five-year-old to bed for me at night because I

couldn't make it up the state.

I would sleep, you know, a good 12, 13 hours at night.

I would have some energy in the mornings, but I knew that my energy

was going to be gone if I could even get through Carline without falling

asleep, it would be gone by the time I got the kids home from school.

So I'd have to get them home from school and set them up in some, in

front of TV or a device and go back to bed just so that I could get back

up again and be there for dinner.

Oftentimes my husband would go.

And how long was it that severe for probably nine months to a year?

I did have, you know, I was productive in the morning, so I had, you know,

a good four hours in the mornings.

So there'll be a little cortisol kick in the morning.

And then once that wore off, it was sluggish through the rest of the day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you were trying the diets during that, that time, when.

Yeah.

So then a lot of those four hours were spent, you know, cooking labor-intensive

yeah, because you do all of our stuff here and it's hours and hours and hours.

So that in research where the main things I was doing during that time, and then

trying to keep up a little bit with the graphic design work, but I ended

up losing most of my, um, most of my business in my contracts during that

time, I just couldn't keep up with the.

Wow.

Was there a point during that nine months to 12 months area that

you thought like, this is just how my life is going to be now?

Oh, that's, that's terrifying.

Yeah.

But yes, that's how I thought it was going to be.

And there was so much guilt about why does this have to happen during

these critical years in my kid's life?

Is this how they're going to know their mom's.

Why is this happening now?

Uh, missing all these great years, and this is how they're going to know me.

And, uh, just battling, um, that guilt was a big part of it.

Didn't feel like the right time.

No, it never will.

But especially when you have little ones that, you know, are they, don't,

it's tough to explain something like that to a kid, you know, and it's

hard for them to understand why mommy can't get up and run around and play.

And, and so it was the super severe for the, that time, but it was longer

than that, that it existed that the symptoms were there, but it was just

really severe for that at nine months.

And I say just nine months, but having been my wife going through a nine months.

Really severe autoimmune flare nine months feels like five years.

So like I got some grays up here that resulted from the last one.

Um, and it's, you know, it's, it's intense, not only for the

individual going through it.

It's intense for everybody around them too.

And it's, it's just a, it's a lot to handle for nine months is a long time

to, to juggle something like that.

Especially if you're trying all the diets, that's like extra labor, intense life.

And research because when you're in the afternoon researching things

probably wasn't really that effective.

No.

And I do feel for the spouses and the partners, because it is, it's

a lot of burden for you guys.

And I know, and women, you know, whoever the spouse is or a partner

is because I know how much you care.

And, um, yeah, my husband was juggling being both parents.

Being the main provider for the family, starting a new job and getting his

nighttime, uh, master's degree at night all while this was happening.

And it was how he got plenty of grades during this.

Yeah.

It just probably should get a trophy or something.

Um, shout out to Carrie's husband.

I understand like I've been been on that end of it too.

Not with two little ones in the house, but I've run all the things

and done all the things and done my work and all of that too.

And it's, after going through it though, I finally started to

understand why so many of my clients in the past, when I was working with

chronically ill people were caretakers.

And I never really was able to put it together cause I'd

never been a caretaker for any.

And it's like your life doesn't stop when you become the caretaker.

So you do your life and the other things.

And then over months of time, plus I was freaked out the

whole time I was not sleeping.

I was panicked, anxious, spending my waking moments, trying to

research and make phone calls like this shouldn't happen to me.

This is I'm in the health field.

Like we should be able to figure this out like this is.

And so I wasn't sleeping for months at a time.

And it's.

Yeah, it's, it's a crazy, crazy window.

And that's kinda what I'm trying to want to get across with some of these stories.

There's people that are going through that.

Like you're not alone.

A lot of people have gone through it and are validating

like, yes, this is really hard.

Like this is objectively hard.

So if you can relate to what Carrie says about beating herself up about,

you know, feeling guilty around, I'm too tired to play with my kids right now.

Like, um, We see you like there's, this is a, this is a thing that people

can relate to that you're not going.

You're not the only one.

And so what was it from the diets?

And you saw probably a bunch of doctors and other types of people

who help people and maybe made little dents in the situation, but what was

it that really started to turn the dial a little bit, like to move the

needle forward, noticeably to where you're like, I just went through

a whole day and I didn't crash or.

You know, your energy level really started to improve.

Was there like one thing or moment or action that you can think of, or was

it a shift overall what you were doing?

Like what have you tied it back to?

Um, so I had the first, uh, plummet nosedive after that respiratory virus in

2012, the second nosedive came in 2014.

Once we had moved into a new house, we moved from Jacksonville,

Florida down to Sarasota.

Uh, still recovering, still trying to figure out and more kind of diagnoses and

symptoms were piling on Then you hit mold.

Then we hit mold.

And so as I was, you know, still in the muck of all this, we ended up

moving into a house that was moldy.

And I had not identified as having mold illness.

I didn't know what serves was at the time, but when I realized that

this was exacerbating symptoms, I started doing the research on that

came across SIRS chronic inflammatory response syndrome started studying Dr.

Shoemaker's.

And then reached out to a Shoemaker protocol doctor found a great

one and started working with him.

And after our first few appointments and all my blood work, you know,

I was given this diagnosis.

Undoubtedly I had of the 10 markers.

I had eight or nine of them, so I definitely had it.

And I had the dreaded gene.

And then you mix that with all the other things I'd been told

by my functional medicine doctor, a MTHFR and all that stuff.

And I basically was told that I can't detoxify.

And in terms of mold, I wasn't going to be able to be in a moldy

building for the rest of my life.

I was told for sure.

Amount of time and the chemical sensitivities that I'd started to

develop, we're going to require medication for the rest of my life.

And so these rest of my life sentences felt like shackles.

And even though it felt good to be validated and have a

real diagnosis and have real.

I don't know, lab work to black, uh, to back it up and have doctors seeing

me and validating me and all that.

Having a lifelong sentence felt really icky to me.

I was starting already to feel like I was creating a bubble for myself, keeping

the out external world away from me and protecting myself in this little bubble.

And now this bubble was getting ever tighter and stronger.

And so, um, As, as appreciative as I was and starting this new protocol, I also

was thinking there had to be another way.

And serendipitously, it was within days of having one of our appointments.

I got a notice that this woman, Annie hopper, who does DNRs dynamic neural

retraining system that I had heard about a few years ago was bringing her program to.

Now mind you she's from, I want to say Western Canada.

So for her to bring her program to central Florida was pretty much

unheard of, and she was bringing it here within a few weeks.

So I felt like that was divine timing.

So I reached out, um, got into her program, went to the DNRs training

course program, whatever, and, um, started to feel a difference immediate.

With doing that training DNRs primarily works on recalibrating

the limbic system, right?

Like the emotional responses in the body.

Yeah.

It's, uh, it's gained quite a bit of steam in the, in the mystery chronic

illness world the last five years.

And I've, I've heard from some people that did it and didn't see

a lot of results, but more than.

Um, than didn't, uh, it is time-consuming though.

Like, what did you do about 30 minutes a day or 60 minutes of.

30 to 60 minutes a day.

And see, I had been introduced to this by a functional medicine doctor two

years before that we didn't get into.

And so I had done the home program back then and I had seen some

results and I understood it.

From a, from a logical perspective.

And I actually did see some results from the practice, but doing it

on your own, it's really hard to stay motivated to keep doing it.

And two years previous, I was just in the beginning stages of exploring diet

and supplements and other holistic modalities, other magic pills outside

of me, do the work the longer you felt.

The more motivated you are to stick to something that might help you.

Like when you're just starting out like, oh, this is a hassle, or this is this, or

whatever, where you start to see results.

And you've not felt good for a long time.

Uh, okay.

I'll do this every day.

No problem.

Um, and so, and you had a coach the second time around and you did the workshop.

It's like a bunch of days.

And then.

I didn't get a coach, but I think the difference was

one, like what you just said.

I was finally had more motivation cause I've been feeling bad for

so much longer, but I had also.

Been with, uh, with a group of 20 people who are just like me in person.

So I felt that comradery and I, I didn't feel so alone.

And so we held each other accountable.

I became pretty close with some of them, and I did get coached

a little bit when I needed it.

But I think just having that community was huge.

Um, it's an often overlooked aspect of healing.

Um, It's much harder to heal anything, whether it's physical, emotional, mental,

spiritual, if you're doing it on your own.

And there's just a medicine in and of itself of being in a group and being

seen and being part of something and, and feeling like you belong somewhere

that you're not like the weird one.

is really overlooked a lot.

James Maskell is a friend who's doing a lot with community-based functional

medicine care where they're doing group care and things like that that are, um,

trying to integrate aspects of community and connection into functional medicine

approaches to health, which I think will drastically increase patient outcomes.

And, uh, I've heard great things about that workshop in particular.

Now there are a lot bigger than 20 people, a lot of the time, um, the DNRs ones.

Yeah.

Um, but so that started to shift immediately.

Like once you came home from that you noticed you were feeling better.

It's hard to say.

I mean, emotionally I was feeling better.

I felt more hopeful.

I, I F I was beginning to sense joy again.

Even that was enough, even if my body was still heavy and I was still tired,

just getting those glimpses of what life's really about again, gave me hope.

And so yeah, those little tastes of victory, right.

Yeah.

Like when you start to come out of it, like when you have that first day

where it's 5:00 PM and you haven't crashed, it's so motivating to keep

going with the rest of it then like, cause it's the needle is moving this

way instead of that way or stagnant.

Yeah.

We, we would celebrate the smallest little wins, like during the flare, like she had

a day where her pain was only minimal and was able to go for a walk with the dogs.

It was like, oh my God, this is so amazing.

And we always say to yourself, I'll never take normal life for granted again.

And.

When we got back to normal, normal felt like a paradise.

Like it was like pain-free and she could move and do these things.

Yeah.

Every little taste of victory along the way.

I think it needs to be celebrated too.

Like I know there's a hesitance, at least with my mental programming, there was

a hesitance to like celebrate anything because then my hopes are up and there's

this, and then it could get crushed again because healing is not a linear journey.

I'm sure you had days that you felt great and then another day would crash.

And it was like, oh no.

And.

Overall, if it's kind of moving in this general trajectory up, down, up, down,

but up each one of those little updates, like celebrate the hell out of it.

Um, you know, enjoy it, enjoy the experience of it.

And so you went from DNRs to there's some more stuff I saw on your list there.

So I know you got into, uh, I know you got into another cup.

I know Joe Dispenza's work and, um, you've gone.

You've mentioned neuro-plasticity on your side.

So you've gotten the full brain rewiring nervous system,

limbic system type of route.

Uh, at that point you were kind of sold on that as an area of focus

or like the capability of it and went into more things like that.

Or how did that evolution take place spent two years really hoping

that diet was going to save me.

And I had gotten a little bit.

Uh, orthorexic I guess a little bit of orthorexia.

I was, I was getting, I think my, um, obsessive about healthy food, just so

people aren't familiar with the fat, my obsession with doing it right.

Um, not messing up was actually hindering my ability to heal at this point.

And I could sense that.

And I was also getting a master's in nutrition at that time,

because I, I wanted to support this, this way of, um, healing.

But after that DNRs, this is another kind of synchronistic event.

I went online to sign up for my next course for my, I was about halfway into

my master's in nutrition and I needed to sign up for the next trimester.

And I go to the page or what I thought was the page.

And I start seeing all these courses that have to do.

Neuro-plasticity and neuro immunology and these things that seemed a lot

more fascinating to me than the physiology and the nutrition courses.

And I was like, wow, I didn't realize these were in here.

I, I, maybe these are electives.

And then I looked at the top of the page and it's a master's of health and

wellness coaching at the same school where I went to, but I just landed on

the wrong page and I didn't even realize this existed and what the courses.

Involved where, so I just picked the right page.

It was the right page, which my applicable credits over and switched

gears and changed my masters.

And then shortly after that was introduced to Martha back her work and.

At the same time I was getting that master's degree.

I started doing the coach training through her Institute online.

That was a nine month course.

And those worked synergistically together.

What made you want to get into coaching?

Cause like that's a different, that's a different thing than healing yourself.

So, um, somewhere along this journey, you decided you did you just want to

learn all this stuff to help yourself?

Or were you with the intention of when I get better, I want to help other people.

Like, where did that come from?

Cause that's a shift, like self healing is one thing, getting a

master's degree in coaching and doing all these trainings to be a coach.

That's like, that's the next step?

Not everybody who goes through a healing journey becomes a practitioner or a coach

or, you know, so where did that come from?

Was there like, um, there was a wake up moment.

I think that's just the Nate and me.

I just think that I knew early on if I was going through this,

that there was a reason for it.

I think I just, my inner, my inner knowing just knew that healing me meant

I was going to use this to heal others.

And when I first was introduced to Martha, I got on an informational

call with her about her program and she took one of my questions.

And it was a question about neuroplasticity.

And then as we were talking, I told her that I had chronic fatigue and

she shared her story of fibromyalgia, but I can't remember the exact words

I put it in the book, but she talked about Shellman sickness and how those.

In cultures who are in these indigenous cultures who are sick,

are often sick like this until they find their way into the shaman role.

And once they're there and they're doing their life's purpose, the

sickness is no longer needed.

And that.

Gave me chills.

I mean, I'm no ShawMan, that was never, but I knew that meant healer in some way.

And I don't use the word healer either.

Um, I like to empower people to find their own inner healer, but,

you know, semantics, whatever.

I knew that the way I was going, I was headed.

Interesting.

Mine's been kind of the same trajectory.

I got a master's in exercise science thinking I was going to

be a trainer of athletes and I trained athletes for like two weeks.

And at USF actually, um, in Tampa.

Well, yeah, I was at, I started grad school at USF and, um, I lived in

Clearwater for like nine months and.

I realized very quickly that I'd made a mistake that I

didn't like training athletes.

And I started a little hodgepodge, personal training business in my garage.

And I was working with people who were really deconditioned, who had like back

problems and were really out of shape.

And I found that much more rewarding to help people be able to like lose a

little bit of weight, walk up the steps, play with their kid, like do things.

Life things rather than trying to like help a guy who can already

jump this high, like jump that high.

Um, it just, and th th the athletes, and I'm sure there's fantastic athletes

to work with out there, but the ones I worked with, like, they didn't want

to be listening to me or dealing.

It was just not a fun thing.

And so I went and got that whole degree in exercise physiology.

Thinking like exercise and nutrition is the way in nutrition,

by what I mean by nutrition.

And that world is like starve yourself.

Don't eat any fat, eat 22 servings of grains a day with broccoli,

with no butter with tuna fish.

Like that was like the nutrition and then starve your clients and then pound

the hell out of them on a treadmill.

And like, that was what I learned in my master's program basically.

And then.

I got introduced to the Chek Institute and like Paul check and like holistic work.

And I went to the first HLC course and like unlearned everything I learned in my

master's program and was like, oh my God.

That was the wrong thing I did.

This is the way.

And even that still has gone, layered and layered, like that was more

functional health and wellness.

Then I went to FDN and started doing labs, but all of this was like my own level

of depth that I was going with my own.

At first, it was super superficial and I just went to the gym and then

I started to introduce healthy food.

So then I learned about that, then I started to learn about

deeper things of health.

So I started to learn about that.

And then naturally I just started teaching them.

Like I can relate to that.

Like as my life shifted, the only thing that made logical

sense was to just do this.

Yeah, and I think we make those wrong turns or wrong decisions.

They're not wrong.

They're helping round out everything so we can see the

full spectrum on and understand.

It never seems that at the time.

Like that, this makes sense why I did this or whatever, but then yeah, it's always

the right move it just because your first master's program got you to click on

the wrong page to be in the second one.

And my master's degree got doors open to me that wouldn't have

been opened to me that allowed me to build the career that I have.

Functional wellness.

Cause there's, there's people that need to see those degrees and those credentials

and those initials and those things.

So, and I wouldn't have gone to the CEC training and I wouldn't have gone to any

of the other things I've done since then.

And even mirrors health crisis, like that forced me down a completely different.

Which involves deeper yet levels of healing, which is more

along the neuro-plasticity and the, and the nervous system.

And I'm doing like trauma work and somatic practices and all

really heavy meditation things.

And like, I never would have done that if she didn't get sick and

we didn't go through that thing.

And.

You wouldn't have been doing what you're doing.

If you hadn't gotten sick and the mold and everything else

and gone through that hell.

And, um, you definitely don't want to hear that when you're in it.

So if you're in it right now and you're listening to this and you're

thinking like, screw you, Mike, I don't want to hear that right now.

I just want it to stop.

Don't tell me there's something good on the other side of this, or

this is for your best or whatever.

Um, I understand because when people were coming to me during Myra's flares and

being like, oh, this is for some divine high, I wanted to choke every one of them.

Um, who would tell me it.

And when you were struggling, if somebody would have came to you and said, like,

this is going to lead you to better times, you'd have been like, I don't care.

I want to play with my kid.

Like, like, and there's, there was such a resentment cause now when she's

been sick recently, I now have a circle of people in my life who are like

those people who say things like that.

They mean, well, I love you all, but I would get a lot of messages.

Like, just keep in mind, this is a blessing or whatever.

And I was like, tell me that in like two years when I've

already figured it out my own.

Um, so I don't want to come across like.

Negating that like, if, if you hear us talking about how our lives went

and how this was for the better.

Yes.

And it was really hard during those periods of time and you

don't see the forest, um, like you don't see the rest of the path.

I guess what I would throw in is that have faith.

There is the rest of the path.

It would be nice if, if family and friends want to know how they can

help, if they can just meet us where we are on the path and be there

with us as we're headed towards.

Yeah, yeah.

Be with, and I I've learned what be with means and it doesn't mean fixing it.

'cause immediately every day I was trying to like get me or how to

paint and fix it and fix this and try this therapy and try this thing.

And I was always like, frantic trying to do this, do this, do this, do this.

And I took me three flares to learn how to actually just be there with

her in it and like resist my urge to try to fix or try to cheer up.

It's the same thing we do when somebody is grieving.

You'll do what you can to like get them to not be so.

Because you feel uncomfortable being sad.

And so you want them to feel better.

Like our culture is that way, like it's unacceptable to just not feel good.

Like somebody has to try to cheer you up or they have to try to

shift it or fix it or whatever.

And I'm sure you had plenty of well-meaning people, you know, look on

the bright side or, you know, at least you got to do this this morning or I'm

sure you'll get better or those things.

Yeah.

I think what would be more valuable to hear is, wow, that's

really hard what you're doing

and that's, it, it doesn't have to go further than that.

Like just acknowledge it and see it.

And so if you're listening to this and someone in your life, um, I don't know.

What, how would you phrase that?

Um, what would you want to hear as the, as the person who's

going through the challenge?

I don't know that I even need for me so much words as their presence, because

one of the biggest lessons I'm learning now as I'm healed, um, and really

is the difference between.

Being and doing, and I, I don't need somebody to do anything for me.

Just like, I don't need to be doing things to fix anything or.

Make me well being is just being with everything, being in the

moment, being with the sadness, if you're grieving, being with

the pain and not running from it.

If you have a fibromyalgia flare being with the fatigue, listening to their

messages, and if you have somebody who wants to help you, then just their

presence of allowing you to be, yeah.

I think the most helpful thing, that whole presence thing was the challenge for me to

like, be able to sit with whatever it was.

And that's super cliche.

And I read like 27 Buddhist books and meditation books and other kinds of books

before it ever even started to stick.

And it's really the training I've done at luminous awareness Institute.

That's taught me like tools and skills that I'm able to like truly.

Not be assessing myself, be with what is in the moment, even when it's really hard.

And, um, the power in that for the other is, yeah, there's like a, I

don't even know how to explain it.

It shifts the experience because the suffering is not wanting

to be with what is right.

Like it's not the thing itself.

Like the thing itself.

Yeah, sure.

That's not fun, but like the more you resist it.

And you've probably learned things on how that, that heavy resistance

actually causes more nervous system pay wildness and probably

contributes to you not getting better.

Right.

Right.

There's so much resistance or so much pain in the resistance.

Yeah.

And it's stressful on the body too.

Like that feeling of resistance probably.

I don't know this, I'm not speaking as an expert here, but I would guess

there are physiological reactions to.

Resentment and that resistance and that anger that are definitely not conducive to

putting the body into a state of healing.

So it's it I'm I've come full circle.

I used to hate it when people would suggest that, you know, the

gaslighting that people get at the doctor that it's all in your head is

way different than what we're saying.

I just want to be clear on that.

Like that's, that's way different.

so many of our community at rebel health tribe are predominantly

women who have gone to doctors with symptoms similar to yours and

been told this is all in your head.

Here's some antidepressants.

And what we mean by acceptance and presence.

I'm not trying to say that.

So I just, I want to throw in a disclaimer there because I know

how painful that is to be in that.

Yeah, that's one of the first things I say when I talk about

neuro-plasticity, it's not that it's mind over matter all in your head.

That is dismissive.

That is not what this is.

It's more trying to convey this understanding that there is power.

You do have power in the ability to rewire your brain.

Um, at the same time, I'm not dismissing you.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I just wanted to hit, I know how sensitive people are to that.

And so neuroplasticity is literally rewiring the nervous

system connections in the brain.

It's um, it's not like you made yourself sick because you think this thing.

Um, so now you do work with clients.

Yes.

Coaching work.

Yeah, revolved mostly in that area.

Do you, do you do nutrition and wellness stuff too?

Or is it mostly neuro-plasticity and neuro reprogramming?

Um, yeah, it's no nutrition because the rules were so strict in Florida.

That that was another reason that it didn't make sense for me

to get a master's in nutrition.

There were.

You can't do that.

You can possibly now, but when I was in it, it was one of three states

that wasn't allowing nutritionists.

You had to be a registered dietician, a physician or an acupuncturist.

And so, um, I haven't even checked into it because I don't

do any counseling on nutrition.

At this point, when I'm coaching clients, I use different modalities to help them.

Some of the work of Byron Katie, I used.

A lot of sematic type work now is really what I'm leaning more toward

is really helping clients connect back with their physical body.

Because the Western model of healing that we've grown up with in our

culture tends to be about numbing.

And separating from our bodies, not feeling our bodies, fixing our bodies,

fixing any sensations that don't feel good, dampening them, numbing

them, becoming separate from them.

And.

This somatic work is, is really the opposite.

A lot of holistic modalities are more intuitive, the N and

to be intuitive, you need to be connected to your physical body.

So we've got to get through this storm of resistance and partner with our physical

bodies, um, in a way that is loving.

And that can be really, um, incredible to feed.

Um, most of us are not taught to know how to feel our physical bodies and

that goes a long way into healing.

So this that's some of the work I do too, through several different modalities

through meditations that I can do over the phone to help, you know, coaching

clients over the phone, but also through therapeutic tremor and, um,

various other body centered modalities.

Somatic.

Work's been kind of game-changing for both of us too.

I have a lot of access there.

So like, um, my system is really well designed for sematic work and

I didn't know, because we're taught actually to not feel especially men.

And so, um, our culture as a whole, but men it's kind of like on steroids.

And so.

Just learning to feel the things in my body and like name them and

acknowledge them and be with them was like a totally foreign exercise

at age 39 that I learned how to do.

And the power there is incredible.

And a lot of the work I'm now doing on the trainings that I'm in, even with Gabor's

work is mostly psychology, but there's a component to it where you're always

leading the client back to the body.

Because.

He'll anything with stories in your head.

things need to be felt.

And so it's been really powerful.

So that's exciting.

Uh, somatic meditations are amazing.

It's my favorite meditation doorway for the most part.

it's a really similar trajectory.

I think You made the progression faster.

It took me like 12 years to go from over-educated.

To doing somatic work and meditations and things, but,

um, it's a similar trajectory.

That's landed in a similar place.

And I think that that is really that kind of work.

Um, DNRs is getting some headway and meant a lot of people's like toe in

the water to that kind of work now in the functional medicine space.

But the deeper level work of.

Practices and somatic therapy and neural reprogramming and, um, a lot

of different things in that energetic healing and all of that is like the

elephant in the room to me when I'm in the functional medicine space.

Now when I'm in at conferences or with other professionals, and it's like the

thing that still isn't talked about, Or a lot, or even in some rooms at all.

And they'll say, I have these clients who take all the supplements and do all the

diets and do the nutrition and I can't figure it out and they don't get better.

And there's like one person in the room who said, oh, have them go to this.

And they try that.

And it's like this huge shift, but then.

They don't really know what's out there yet.

Like the functional medicine practitioners are really inexperienced what I'm

seeing in these types of things.

So they might have one person they sent to hypnotherapy that had awesome results.

And then they sent everyone to hypnotherapy.

And so it's, um, it's just, it's just teetering right now.

Like it's the thing in functional medicine that they're realizing that

a lot of the most stubborn patients who make some progress like this

is the level on which they need.

And so the people you see probably have been through quite a bit of that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there's not a one size fits all.

And, but I do think that we need to be connect with our physical bodies

and people are going to resonate with different ways of doing.

Yeah.

And then that's where the gold is.

I think, and there's there's jokes.

Our culture is completely designed to not do that.

So don't feel bad if this is sounding foreign to you or strange, there's a

comedian that says the only two drugs that are legal in this culture are the ones

that get you to work harder and forget how much you hate it, which is caffeine.

And alcohol, so drink the caffeine all day to do the job that you hate and then

drink on the nights and the weekends to forget how much you hate your job.

And that's literally like two of the biggest industries in this country.

And both of those pull you out of your Bonnie caffeine in a different way.

It pulls you up here.

Um, but, um, yeah, so don't feel bad if you're not there.

And so then you see when you're doing these things, why your body

has, for those of us, who've had mystery illnesses, chronic fatigue,

fibromyalgia, autoimmune diseases.

Why the body has to scream to get your attention with.

Big messages because you can't hear them with the caffeine and the, this and

that, the things that are disconnecting you that has to scream when you kind of

let go of that and come back, you can learn to hear the body's wisdom through

its whispers instead of it screams.

And it's so much more pleasant.

Yeah.

Yes.

Definitely that the volume doesn't need to be turned up as loud.

If you don't have as much ambient sound, right?

Like, and that could be zoning out any way you want Netflix, binges,

shopping, food, drinking, smoking, all the things, plus the chaos of

life and the stress and this and that.

Like it's yeah, the body will get louder and louder and louder until it actually

stops you from doing what you're doing.

And.

I can say that I noticed subtle changes in mind now at a level that I never would

have before and I would have got sick.

And now it's like, oh, I feel this weird thing going on.

Or your intuition of knowing this thing I'm doing isn't right for me.

And you'll feel that, whereas before I would've gone like four years doing

a thing and hating it every second and knowing that, but shoving it down.

And so I think that's brilliantly, where did the whispers instead of the

shouts, because the shouts are not fun.

They're not fun.

And for this type a perfectionist go, go, go personality.

And me did not want to succumb to the fatigue.

So I would fight those naps every afternoon.

I mean, I took them, but I was mad at myself for having to take them

and I would lay down and I'd just try to go to sleep and get it over

with so that I'd be rejuvenated.

And it's taken me years to come to a place where I actually look forward.

To those times, and I don't have to have the screaming need

to lay down and nap anymore.

I just am called to my little meditative space with my headphones, and I want to

lay there and feel my physical body and listen to this meditative music and just

be, um, I can be there for an hour, hour and a half, but if I, if I don't have

it one day, It's not that I have to have it to, to get through the day anymore.

I truly miss it.

I miss that connection with myself, which is creating a stronger connection

with my inner knowing and my intuition and messages that I'm able to

receive in multiple ways in my body.

It's such an important relationship to build.

There's no.

Important relationship that you have, uh, than the one with your own body

and your own like true nature, essence self that knows the way and knows

the right things for you to be doing.

And, um, yeah, this has been a fun conversation.

So I hope, I hope everybody got a lot out of it.

I know that I learned something during this and it sounds.

When we're chatting, like it sounds, oh, I've got this off.

I can respond.

Yes.

Yes.

And when I'm talking, it's almost like I'm learning while I'm talking.

Like it's like we're piecing things together, you know?

And so it was a lot of fun and I'm really excited for the book.

Congratulations on that.

I know.

How much work goes into that.

And so, um, when they joke and saying my babies being

born, it's like having a baby.

So it's a, it's a book baby.

And so congratulations on that.

We'll have links to your site, um, avocado to Zen, uh, underneath this,

when people are watching this or on the show notes, there'll be links

to your site and links to the book, links to everything they can find.

Um, how would, how would it be the best way for people to get in

touch with you if they want to?

Um, the contact form on my website is.

Um, it's at the top tab, avocado two zen.com and there's a contact.

Great.

Oh, Instagram too.

Is the main social media I use.

And that's avocado dot two dot Zen.

Okay.

We'll make sure the link is there for them to go straight there.

I'll gather the links and we'll, we'll get them all there.

So check out the Instagram, check out the, uh, the website, the book,

the book will be on the website and.

We already were chatting before we came on air about some other collaborations

we're gonna go forward with.

So you will be seeing more of carry on stuff that I'm

doing, um, in the near future.

And I look forward to that and thank you for sharing so openly about your

story and your journey and what you've learned and where you've really landed,

I think is such a healthy spot to be in that it almost kind of emanates

and I hope people can, can feel that.