i first discovered dr joe's first book called breaking the habit of being yourself because that
title really did resonate with me at that moment when i first did see it because i was really not
liking who i was and i wanted to break the habit of being me um so i started reading the book
to understand you know what was it about and what did i need to do to break the habit
and um just leading up to that there was just a lot of chaos in terms of health for me
and what really ended up happening was for about i'd say almost eight nine years
i had been told that i had hashimoto's and the doctors really just kind of said
we think you have hashimoto's based on all these symptoms and this data make sure that you start
taking your meds and you know kind of go from there that really did spiral me into a lot of
um trauma i would say just having it didn't feel like my truth but something that every
you know the doctors just kept persisting based on all my symptoms so hashimoto's is a
autoimmune disease where essentially your thyroid is attacking itself and for me what was happening
is i was hyperthyroid and hypo so i was swinging back and forth i was having anxiety
panic attacks i was had depression i had brain fog i could um have a very you have a corporate
job that's um analytical in nature i had to be on but it took me all my energy from all day long
from you know five six o'clock at night to the next morning for me to be able to build
up enough energy to be able to then work my my day job and not allow the world to see
that i was you know limited in any way it was extreme enough to the point where you know so i'm
taking antidepressants i'm taking things to help me sleep i'm i'm getting up in the morning i'm
taking things to help me wake up so that really was the habit that i was trying to break i didn't
like who i'd become i didn't like who the person i was and i knew it wasn't um you know what life
was about and um reading his book started to you know bring me into his meditation work and so i
started to work on his meditations um and i think the most profound experience for me was um just
knowing that all of that was not my truth um and that there was a different life for me i decided
to continue with dr joe's work and registered for australia 2018 um in november 2018 in australia
i had the most amazing coherence healings um i think that's really where things became very
profound in that i did have a healing but i think the underpinning of it all wasn't so much that
it healed me from hashimoto's but more so that i just got a much grander gift where
where dr joe asks you to forgive your abuser in order to free yourself and i think that's
probably the biggest gift of all through all of this which is i can have a huge appreciation for
forgiveness as my freedom and
and it didn't define me whatever that was that happened in my childhood
and um so yeah as part of the coherence healing he kind of just asks you you know what are you
gonna surrender and um you know what are you gonna forgive and in that moment was where i went with
the one thing that i felt like i could just never forgive um you know that i was just gonna hold on
to it and you know i was gonna be mad about it and you know hate it and whatever i knew it was
part of my past but at the same time i always knew it was like right there and it would just
keep showing up in some way fashion or form so that first coherence healing when he said
who are you going to forgive and how are you going to surrender that is the moment in which i just
said i will forgive my abuser and i think really that was the most profound healing of all um
so i would say to the world or to anybody who's listening um who's been in a situation where
they have been abused whatever that looks like i am at a place where i feel like it's done and
in 2018 if someone would have said to me that that's what you're going to come out of australia
with i would have never believed him i myself you know don't even know if i could intentionally
have you know set that as an intention because it just feels so overwhelming and
something that just feels so unforgivable in this world in this lifetime so to forgive and allow
the healing surrender i think that that really just brought me into a whole new level of me
the version of me that i always knew that existed and that wasn't defined by that one or you know
series of moments from my childhood dr joe says you know you if you can forgive and then you can
just love and you can you've really then created freedom for for yourself um so to me that's that
was still part that i was holding on to it's like okay i'll forgive him um and i'll go my merry way
only to realize that there was still more that had to be done there for getting to a point where we
it is possible it's possible to love and forgive knowing that they are just as human as we are and
knowing that they've got their journey while we've got ours in 2018 like i kind of didn't believe
that i was like i had a spontaneous healing right and i said um you know what i'm gonna kind of
wait a bit and then i'll get back to you guys right because i was just like not sure and i
think it was about a month or so later that i was like okay sonia do you believe in in what happened
and or are you just going to keep taking your meds thinking that you know you just need to keep going
with this form of life right of so i mean i i would tell people ask your doctor first but for me
personally i did come to a point where i realized and i just knew in like every cell of my body that
hashimoto's was gone and i no longer needed any of the medications that i was taking and so i was
able to you know just stop the meds and and live a a med-free life so yeah i just wanted to you know
let people know that it does take time for you to understand and believe but then you have to get to
that point where you say something like do you believe and are you going to walk as if or just
keep holding on to the old yesterday i walked in my meditation when dr joe in the meditation
says who are you and um who are you walking as and i said i'm walking as me and i'm free free