i had had some digestive issues and some other things and i i went to a naturopath initially
i didn't really want to go to a regular doctor and they said it was you know just
the typical things it was dairy gluten all of these other things that if i just took them
out of my life everything would be so much better so i had one of those blood tests
and they said that i was semi-allergic to all kinds of different things you know i shouldn't
eat almonds anymore and follow a paleo diet and do all of that so i followed the paleo diet and
did all this research online and got rid of all of my cooking pans that had nonstick i got rid of all
the plastic because then there was estrogens in the plastic and maybe that's what was you
know causing my skin issues and all kinds of different things and so this was in 2015 and
then one day i got out of the shower and my hair was falling out and like big clumps and i thought
it was my shampoo um and then it was guacamole after that um i ate guacamole the day before
and then i ate it the next day and my face swelled up and so i went back to the doctor
and she decided to try to go over more things maybe i was allergic to even more things on all
of the prior blood work that they did and they keep eliminating more and more things and i don't
know why but i'm having all of these reactions to everything so eventually she kind of passes me
along and says she doesn't really understand what the cause is so they sent me to the mayo clinic
did some tests i had a double bone marrow biopsy and they came back and told me that
i had something called mast cell activation syndrome and of course once it had a name
i went wild you know the type a figure it out type personality that i was
googling everything and trying to learn as much as i could about it and i remember sitting there
with the doctor and him telling me that it was permanent and it wasn't going to get any better
and i remember asking and i said so you're telling me
this is like a light switch and my whole life the switch has been turned off and
one day it's been turned on and you can't turn it back off and he said no it's it's forever
and i just remember in my mind saying if the light switch was off my whole life why can't it go back
off again and as soon as i got diagnosed it just it really spiraled from there it was all kinds of
foods and every time i would react to a new food they would remove it from my diet until there came
a point where there wasn't anything that i could eat anymore and i ended up on elemental formula
um for like three to five weeks at a time just to give my immune system and my body a rest
from trying to fight all the foods that i was taking in and i lost a very significant amount
of weight because i couldn't need any food but i believed the whole time that this was
just impossible if this was the switch that got turned on and i could turn it back off and
i was really stubborn and i didn't want to believe it so i kept searching for all kinds
of different cures outside of me i flew to new york to see a special chinese medicine doctor
i did all of these different things i had a bag of epipens of mast cell stabilizers
and i would eat the things that i wasn't supposed to eat and basically i was trying to force it so
in 2017 i had it was just a very stressful time and everything kind of collapsed i lost
two of the people closest to me and my dog all within a short period of time and i spiraled and
that was kind of what put me over the edge to do something different and in one of my support
groups there was a woman who said you should look into limbic system dysfunction and look
into that and there was a program and one of the books on the reading list was you are the placebo
and i was going through this other program and thinking okay this makes a lot of sense
and i read you are the placebo and i said this i did it to myself i did this exactly to myself i
stressed myself out so bad i was looking for all of these answers i went to this doctor
they told me all of these things in my environment are bad for me and then i turned
absolutely everything around me into an enemy i turned my shampoo my face wash my conditioner
all the foods the containers in my house the pans everything into the enemy and and i was
just constantly driven by fear and i was trying to control everything and it spiraled out of control
and i read your the placebo and i thought well shoot that makes a lot of sense
and so that was in 2017 and i started doing the meditations but i didn't really learn
my lesson well enough because i was this person and i i didn't have this illness
anymore in my meditation but when i went out of my meditation i was the same person and i didn't
really understand that part 2019 rolled around and i really wanted to get into the portland
advanced retreat and it was sold out and i said you know i can't i really can't wait any longer
i was in this huge transition in my life where i stopped and i i was meditating all the time
and having these great meditations but my environment was so stressful
i wasn't in a good situation at home and i decided to get a divorce i decided to basically
get rid of my entire life as i knew it and i knew that i had to fundamentally change and i had
watched all different videos of dr joe on youtube but i bought the intensive and progressive when i
didn't get into the retreat and when i watched that it was like he had shown me a mirror of my
true self for the very first time you know i was always thought i was very aware of the kind of
person i was i knew i had control issues i was type a i was always pushing and climbing and i
hated surprises you know i always wanted an agenda i hated the idea of the unknown it terrified me
and so i watched that and everything he said was like oh that's me oh that's me too
oh yeah i do that ooh i still do that it's funny i've read all of his books and i do all the
meditations but i am all of these things and it was it was just that was the change moment
for me that's what really did it so i had that realization that you
can't just read his books and everything that i read made sense right i understood
fundamentally how i had gotten myself sick i just and i knew i would be better someday i just didn't
realize that i had to let it all go i had to completely change and become a new person if
i wanted to heal because the person that was sick was the old me and i needed to not know
that person anymore i get into the malta week-long advanced retreat and i thought that i really had
things figured out before malta and i got there and it was really incredible i just had to start
over and change and when i went to malta i was still so new and i was still focused on my healing
i kept trying to balance my energy centers and i was always trying to think okay which energy
center caused my illness or where would that rest and how can i focus my attention there and i was
always focused on meditating for healing instead of just meditating and
the coherence healing really took me back it was like my chest cracked open feeling the love in
the room and i had my healing and it was it was really incredible i couldn't feel my body after
somebody was nice enough to put me in my room afterwards and um i had also had a mystical
experience there and it was funny that dr joe was joking about somebody got freaked out where they
thought they died in a meditation that happened to me i thought i died um i know we're supposed to be
in the black void but everything was white and everybody that i had recently lost was there in
energy form and when i woke up i just i i let it all out i was sobbing uncontrollably and somehow
i knew that they were all there and they were all around me and i was able to let go of that grief
and then i went home and it was sometime in the beginning of this year i think that
everything changed i i learned to let go more and more everything just clicked for me i did
the blessing of the energy centers meditations again and everything was aligned i didn't have
to force it i didn't have to thank them into the right spot they were just there and i had been
on a medication for a few years to help control my immune system and i went home and
i know dr joe says you kind of just eventually you grow out of your medication i wasn't really ready
to let go of it but i um i went and i got another month's worth of injections and then the beginning
of the year started and even as you know the current time zone started taking place i just felt
i felt so much more in line i was internalizing everything that i learned in malta and i just
decided not to go back for my medication anymore and that was 10 months ago and
i am completely free i eat what i want i do what i want i don't carry any medication with me
i have no symptoms and i'm like the healthiest i've ever been i just closed the book on that and
it's strange it really is like i read it in a book and it didn't actually happen to me it's
yeah it's like a distant memory of someone else's story but i guess i would say to anybody who
is doing this i remember just watching videos and people would have the one meditation pop and
almost watching it and thinking like well if that didn't happen to me
maybe that's not you know maybe it's just i'm not going to be the one to heal i knew i would be
but there was always that doubt and it wasn't pretty
and i failed and i had to restart and stop a bunch of times i would meditate
and i would go back into my environment and be the same person and i would fall off the wagon
and come back so it doesn't always look linear or pretty but you just have to stick with it