From Trauma to Triumph: Unveiling the Healing Power of Holistic Wellness

Join us on a profound journey of transformation as we delve into the depths of holistic wellness with Peter Michael Dedes host of the Transcendent Minds Podcast and founder of Human Development Systems Coaching. 


In this enlightening conversation, Lin Rivers shares her journey from adversity to empowerment, navigating through trauma and overcoming deep-rooted beliefs to embrace a holistic approach to health and well-being.

Through candid and heartfelt dialogue, Lin reveals the pivotal moments that solidified her belief in holistic wellness, bridging the gap between traditional and non-conventional methods. 


From unravelling the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit to challenging scepticism and resistance, Lin offers invaluable insights into the transformative power of aligning with one's authentic self.

Discover the profound impact of spirituality on counselling practices and learn how Lin navigates diverse beliefs to foster healing and growth. 


With a focus on empowerment and self-investment, this conversation inspires listeners to take control of their health, embrace their innate potential, and embark on a journey toward vibrant well-being.


You can connect with Lin Rivers: https://www.linnrivers.com/

Transcript

PMD: 0:27

Today I have the privilege of speaking with Lin Rivers, a functional health and wellness expert, educator, and the force behind a platform aiming to empower people to take control of their health on all levels, mind, body, and spirit. Lin, welcome to the Transcendent Minds podcasts.

LR: 0:48

Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

PMD: 0:51

You're welcome. Your journey has been truly remarkable when we spoke previously and it's been marked by a series of formidable challenges ranging from the death of a loved one to homelessness and career challenges and much more. Can you take us back to the early days and share some of the obstacles that you faced and what were the moments that could have prevented you from succeeding?

LR: 1:18

Oh, yeah. I'll sum it up fairly quickly. So I had chronic health conditions from very early on in life. I had pneumonia when I was one and three. I was tied down in incubators. That alone created a lot of PTSD from a very early age. And so I grew up with the fear of love, because at that time I took my parents feelings and vibrations when they would say, I love you, and they were afraid that I was gonna die, I took that as love equals something really bad. And so I grew up fearing love, and would never tell my family that I loved them. Every time they said, I love you to me, I still remember the feeling of tensing up and getting really angry about it. So between that and growing up with asthma, where I was also in and out of the hospitals repeatedly, I had an alcoholic father. I lost my grandma so I was eight years old and this is actually really pivotal story. I was eight years old and it was the first time that I ever said, I love you. I wrote it in a note to her when she was in the hospital and she took her last breath right after I said, I love you. At that age, we have narcissistic tendencies. So I thought that I killed her because I said those words. That solidified the fear that I had previously and so I took that even further in life and I lost the majority of my family before I was 15 years old, including my mom. And I would not say I love you to my mom, even though she was dying. So that was one of the big issues that I really had to learn to navigate later on in life. So there's all of this kind of trauma. My parents had a tumultuous relationship too. I grew up in and out of these discomforts and then all the antibiotics and steroids that I was on as a child wrecked my gut microbiome, which sent me into a cascade of symptoms through my teens and twenties, endometriosis, other hormonal imbalances, constant migraines, suicidal depression, and then that carrying into relationships. I continued that trauma and taking them in and it was, just really toxic unhealthy situations that I continued putting myself in and expressed and the illness kind of cascaded and I ended up with two near death experiences. One at the same time that my partner was actually diagnosed with the same cancer that my mom died of when she was 40. And so it was just this, long line of things that just kept throwing themselves at me. And yes, I ended up homeless at one point too for six months, living out of an office space, not knowing how I was going to eat day to day. And so all of these things, there are so many points where I could have just given up, especially the last near death experience I had where I was in the hospital and I was just like, why am I staying here? If I'm going to stay here, I need to choose to be here. I need to stop trying to escape. There's just so many things that cascaded on top of each other. That's not everything, but I think that gives a pretty good summary of the consistency, it was pretty much 30 plus years of just constant one thing after the other. And at this point, no, I don't have any family members left. It's just myself. And I was put on a pretty solo journey very early on in life and I'm thankful for it because it gave me a lot of beautiful life lessons and I've seen life from very different perspectives. And yeah, I'm happy that I didn't give up.

PMD: 4:39

Wow. And you're still standing. Still standing, which is fantastic and I salute you for that. You've overcome the rough and tumble of life and what life has delivered to you. Over the years you've accumulated a diverse educational background, including holistic functional medicine, spiritual counseling, yoga therapy, and many others. What actions did you take to overcome the barriers in your life and how did your educational journey play a role in shaping the person you are today?

LR: 5:13

Yes. So they're completely intertwined. My family, the majority of them died from illness. The only person who lived to be old was my grandfather who died at 90 from complications of the vaccination. He was the only one that made it to that age. Everyone else died fifties or younger. When I was 15 and my mom died, that's where the question of why is all of this happening started? Why are all my family members dying from X, Y, Z? And so that's where the big question started for me. And when I was 17 years old, I kept going to the doctors for so many different symptoms. They were putting me on antidepressants and all of these different antibiotics. And one of the infections that I had that I kept going back for time and time again, they would just give me the same antibiotic cream. Three months later I'm back there for the same thing and something, it was a download. It was definitely an intervention that happened in that moment, because at that time we had barely started dial up internet. I remember the AOL sound. It was just getting started. So there wasn't a lot on the internet. And I just had this knowing to look online and figure out how to do this the natural way what I was trying to get rid of and I was like, okay, I'll search like literally I was not attached to that world. I knew nothing about it. So I didn't know where this was coming from. And so I got online. I did a search and I found a natural solution. I was like, okay, let me give this a shot. Nothing else is working. So why not try it. And sure enough, two days later, it's gone and it never comes back. And that, for me, was like this aha moment of there's something to this. And so that's where I started researching more, and I ended up getting rid of my asthma, that I had my entire childhood and teens, and I was told you're going to have this the rest of your life. You're going to have to take steroids and be on antibiotics and for me, it, that was like oh, okay, I just trust doctors and listen to what they say. But this moment where I got rid of it, all of a sudden, that went out the window. That started me on a trajectory of the second I graduated high school, barely graduated, by the way. I ended up going to school for holistic nutrition at the time and personal training. And that cascaded into the next thing. I was like, okay, I want to learn more about the body. Then I entered into yoga therapy and then it became functional medicine and massage therapy and all these different pieces that were just coming together. And the reality was all of these modalities I was doing because I was helping myself, right? Like it wasn't the intention wasn't even external at that point. It was how do I heal my body? Because there's obviously a lot going on inside. And it wasn't really until honestly about five years ago when I started diving into the functional medicine aspect after I came out of the hospital. I was in there for a week because my appendix ruptured and I had peritonitis and my gut microbiome was so wrecked that I could barely eat two foods, two different foods, and I was having histamine reactions to the point where I almost had a heart attack from throwing a frisbee. My body got so broken down that I couldn't live. I was literally bedridden, or when I tried to do something, I would have to recover for 15 minutes if I did a one minute activity. So I was like, there's something more I need to figure this out. I started diving into functional medicine and that shifted everything because it got to the root cause. I find, I was finally learning why am I sick? And I had to take that at even bigger extent because even functional medicine practitioners. weren't able to give me a lot of the answers that I was looking for so I had to go deeper. I had to become an independent researcher and start understanding things from a completely different perspective. Then I started understanding why all of us are sick. What the biggest root cause of all of this is. So it really changed my trajectory and yes, it was my healing. That's what created my healing, but it also is what put me into this path of helping others to find this there. It wasn't ever a question of separation. It was like you experienced everything that you did and all the losses that you did because you have so many more people to help because this is a crisis. This is an epidemic that we're in and so that's where it brought me. It molded me into this one being of your health is your gift.

PMD: 9:40

I'm smiling because there's so many parallels. I can empathize with you and I salute you for all the things that you've been through and that was right for you to go through all those things because now you've arrived in a place where you can help other people light up their own darkness. What you were describing was an epiphany because there's always a turning point in everyone's journey. What were those pivotal moments of clarity or breakthroughs that fueled your determination to push forward?

LR: 10:12

That's a great question because really, honestly, it wasn't until my mid twenties that I stopped living on autopilot, and so I continued the victim mentality for a long time, even when I understood it in my twenties, it's still an easy thing to play. It's easy to play the victim in this society and point fingers as to why things are happening. But I want to say that my first near death experience as an adult. My partner was dying at the same time, so I think I mentioned that a minute ago, that I had a partner who had the same kind of colon cancer that my mom had, and at the same time that she was diagnosed, I was dying from my organs shutting down, and in that moment, I had to make a decision to take care of myself, because I couldn't help her, and I didn't have anyone to help me, so she had to go back and live with her family, so I had to step up and take care of myself. And it was the first time that I had been in a relationship that I genuinely wanted to be in and I had to choose myself, and in that moment, when she had to go and live with herself. I knew that she was choosing to let go of this life. I knew that she wasn't going to make it. There's a whole thing that happened where I genuinely saw her soul leave her body. She was very unhappy on this planet and I knew that she wasn't going to stick around. And it was in that moment that I realized two things. One, I had zero control over another person's life as much as I was helping her get better and we could see the physical, like realistic probability of her actually getting better, she chose a different path. And she chose I'm just going to continue doing things the way that I was doing them before, because I'm not happy here. Those were her words, so I learned no matter how much knowledge I have and when I was in that situation, I had this belief that if I had only known then in the past with my mom, what I knew now, I would be able to save her. And it was this aha moment of, no, you can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. And I can give anyone the information, but it's up to them. And the second thing that the piece that you're asking about is I realized in that moment that I was creating my own reality to the point that I literally attracted a partner who died from the same cancer that my mom died of, and that was the biggest aha moment of my life of realizing that I had been living on autopilot so much that I was consistently calling in these old patterns, these old connections, these old relationships that connected me to the trauma that I had not healed through completely. So that moment for me was what am I creating in my life and what do I actually want? Do I really want to keep going down the same road and being sick and being put in these situations time and time again, and calling in people who are going to consistently abandon me in some form so I can feel safe in that known space and that was where everything shifted and where I said, I'm going to take care of myself and I'm going to get better. Obviously took a little bit of time because I ended up with another near death experience, not too soon after, but it was the moment where I said, I have to create a better reality and that's where everything shifted.

PMD: 13:19

How did those moments shape your approach to health and wellness?

LR: 13:24

It was the beginning of understanding that we had to learn so much more about the human body. So through my near death experiences, I was shown the fact that we have this vessel that gets us through life, and we need to take care of it, and when we don't, that is considered suicide. That was completely mind blowing thing for me to hear because we think of suicide as Oh I'm going to either shoot myself or take myself out in some way. But the reality is us not taking care of our vessels is considered suicide. When I came back with this knowing I was like, Oh my God, what do we actually need in order to be healthy versus listening to all of these different fads that pop up and all of these different ideas and all of these methodologies that come from ego versus really diving into the science of our body and understanding how it functions and that it's its own entire organism. If we don't understand it from that perspective and we keep trying to just point at all of these different oh your liver is out of function. Okay, great. But why is the liver out of function? What does this come back to? What are we needing to find at the root in order for it to heal? So that changed the whole approach that I was doing because I was in the same mentality of the Western medical system and even functional medicine practitioners where you hone in on one aspect and everything revolves around, Oh you just have to pay attention to this or even like the gut microbiome. Yes, does the majority of disease stem from the gut microbiome? Yes, but we also have to look at what does it affect? We have millions of nerves that run from our gut into our brain. So we need to look at it from the whole perspective and that shifted the way that I looked at mental illness, which I literally dealt with the majority of my life and when I started uncovering those pieces and understanding that mental health we don't need to fix it from a perspective of neurological or from a prescription. We need to heal it from the root cause of what's happening in the gut and the bacteria that are causing these responses. When I shifted that for myself, I still remember sitting there and just looking around my room being like, this is how I'm supposed to feel on a regular basis. I can be calm and happy and not in fight or flight on a regular basis and that was so profound for me I took it in that direction. Like it, it shifted the way I wanted people to understand health and wellness because it doesn't matter how successful even the microbiologists are, or the doctors who are deemed like, Oh, but they wear a white coat and they've been through all this education. They're not taught these things. They're not taught to get to the root. They're taught to prescribe. They're taught to find symptoms and mask symptoms in the Western medical system, so I went deep with it. It really transformed how I want people to understand what's actually happening in their body.

PMD: 16:15

You just have to look around you and people are what I call vertically unwell. People are walking around with diabetes, with atherosclerosis, arthritis, all these things can be solved. Actually can be prevented easily. Prevention is the cure. As you stand today having overcome such diverse challenges, what does it feel like to have everything come together? Can you share some of the emotions of success and what's it like to be where you are now teaching others about holistic health and how does it align with your vision for the future?

LR: 16:53

I feel on purpose. Now I feel like I'm here intentionally and I am creating the reality that I want to see myself in and it feels like there's no other way. It feels like I am exactly where I'm supposed to be. However, it was not always like that because I had so much PTSD and one of my PTSD triggers I thought for a very long time that happiness equals death because all of my family members when they died, they reached a really beautiful point in their life and they were happy. And then they died. So I took that on. And so as I started getting more successful in what I was doing, I sabotaged it for quite some time because I just had this wiring system that said, oh, you can't do that. You're gonna die if you do. And it took me a while to undo that neurological programming and the point where this is one of the biggest pieces of advice that I could give anyone is you're going to die regardless. So do you want to die happy and knowing that you did what you want to be doing in life or die and be in fear and never do anything that you want to do? Once I realized that I was like Jesus of course, now at this point, like I want to do what I came here to do and what lights me up, because That's the most healing that we can offer the world. If you're doing what you love in this life, you are emanating a light that is so bright that is healing, right? And if you continue to live in fear and all of these different judgments in this world that just emanates this darkening lower vibration. So I realized wow, I want to be high vibe energy. I want to share this gift. I want to share my light. And one day I will die. Yes, that is true, but I don't know when and it could be 80 years from now. Nobody knows. But I want to know that I lived fully. That was what changed it for me.

PMD: 18:48

That's beautiful and it's clear to me you've rewired,reset and rebuilt your neurological system so that you went from the saboteur to the safe. So your story is not only about a personal triumph and you moving from a victim to a victor but it's also about the profound transformation you now bring to others. And listening to what you're saying, For me, it's a Testament to the power of resilience and education and the human spirit. Your spirit is now flaring. Can you elaborate on how your journey has influenced your coaching philosophy and the platform that you're building?

LR: 19:35

Absolutely. So let's see which direction I want to take that because yes, I did overcome these situations of many different kinds, but I think it's important to remember that you can keep going through these things time and time again. I could have gone through all of these things and stayed in the same mindset and lived in that and continued bringing in these situations, right? So there's a difference between being resilient and shifting your reality and actually creating a new life for yourself versus the people who continue living in that old reality and continue playing victim and continue doing the same things in life. We see people in their sixties and seventies who are still playing the same victim mentality that they have their entire life. So I think that's what really shifted it for me and being able to show this to my clients, right? Rather I'm in a one on one coaching or through the program, which I'll talk about in a minute. But, it's reminding people that healing in any capacity, whether it's mental, physical, or emotional, it's 90 percent mental, if not more. You have to have the mental understanding that you're capable of healing and the desire to heal in order to actually heal. If you're not going to rewire your neurological system to say, oh, I know that I can get better then you're not going to because you're going to keep feeding yourself the same line of, Oh, nothing's going to change. Nothing's ever going to get better. You have to learn. You have to grow. You have to be willing to take the steps to become a different person. You can't be on the same path and expect a different approach, right? You can't get a different outcome doing the same things that you've been doing time and time again. So I think it comes back to that mental mindset of shifting your reality and hoping for better. I wasn't for hope for a big chunk of my life because hope can be defeating, right? If you hope for something and you don't get it, that can feel really defeating. But knowing that there can be a different way of living is really what's going to start setting you up for success and I take that into my coaching, but I really have more empathy for people and understanding of why people are the way that they are and I can come at it from so many different approaches in so many different walks of life because I've been through the majority of what a lot of people are gonna eventually have to go through and so I have this different way of connecting with people. I respect people wanting to be therapists and going to school for it, but I think that there should be some form of discomfort or challenge that you had gone through yourself in order to be a therapist, because you really can't teach empathy, and you have to have gone through something difficult to be able to sit in front of someone and truly understand where they're coming from. It doesn't have to be the same challenge that you went through, but understanding the depth of a really traumatic experience to be able to connect with someone I feel it should be necessary in these situations and it's not. I went to therapist after therapist, thinking like I was going to find the help, but the most that they had been through was, oh, like my schooling so difficult and I don't know how I'm going to take this test next week. And I was teaching them. I was coaching them in my therapy sessions, and I actually had one therapist pull me aside and tell me, I don't feel like there's anything that I can offer you that you're not already offering yourself. And so that is what I turned into this. I want to make sure that I am offering my clients the knowing that I've been through difficult situations and I understand how difficult it can be, but to also not allow them to continue playing the victim mentality. I don't just sit there and allow them to come time and time again with the same problem. We're going to work through this or there's no reason for you to be doing this because you're wasting your own time and your own money and it's not going to benefit you for me to allow that to happen. And do you want me to continue or do you want to ask me about the course?

PMD: 23:26

Yeah. The platform that you'll be building.

LR: 23:28

Yes. So the platform that I'm building is literally 15 years of education, research, personal trial and error and I've worked with thousands of people to overcome these conditions. And the course is chronic illness to vibrant wellness and it's all about learning why we're so sick in the first place. Why 50 percent of Americans have diabetes or are pre diabetic and why 88 percent of the overall population has insulin resistance. It's to really get people to understand their body, their health, and how to take their health into their own hands and actually transform their lives by its mental practices. It's the physical understandings, the cellular levels, what your liver's doing, all of these functions that you need to be aware of and how to bring your body back into health. And It's literally 50 during the pre launch because I want people to have a no excuse price to actually learn about their body and how to heal. We're at this time in life where we can no longer go on and take prescription drugs that are going to continue making people worse down the line and the biggest question I ask my clients is if you're doing the same thing five years from now, if you're in the same boat five years from now, are you going to be happy? Or if it gets worse? Is that really what you're going to want for yourself and 99 percent of the time it's of course not no and so it's take a step forward then, invest in yourself, learn what you need to about your body and start making the changes now, because otherwise you're going to be the statistic of, oh, I'm 80 years old and I'm in a walker and I can't get by versus my friends who are in their 70s and 80s and who are climbing and still riding bikes and kicking my butt and there's a better way of living and I created this course for people to do this for themselves.

PMD: 25:19

When it comes to investing in yourself, it's often overlooked, but let's be real. The value you bring to the table is far beyond pocket change. In fact, it's chump change. I'm not knocking small expenses, but when you think about it, people will often drop$50 on random stuff, ancillary nonsense yet hesitate to invest in their own growth. And personally I've poured thousands of dollars into self-improvement and let me tell you it's been worth every penny, but here's the thing most people are fixated on appearance, not functionality. They're more interested in how they look as distinct from how they function. And yes, of course, looking good is nice. But if it's all surface level, you're missing out on addressing the deeper issues within. It's like slapping on fancy clothes to hide inner turmoil. But once you start understanding how your body truly functions, it's a game changer. You become much more attuned to what your body needs, whether it's adjusting beliefs, tuning into your unconscious, or simply sensing what's going on, what's going on inside. I can really relate to that. I've been there. I've dealt with my fair share of health challenges like asthma and plenty more that I won't dive into right now. But the point is I've walked the walk, not just read about it in a book and for me, it's about the firsthand experience because that changes everything. It's not about comparing academic knowledge to real life struggles. The distinction here is it's about bridging the gap between intellect and empathy. Let's talk about holistic and functional medicine for a moment because it's a field that often challenges the status quo and sometimes for good reason. And I won't go into all the reasons right now, but my question for you is can you share any hurdles you may have faced in embracing this perspective, this holistic perspective, especially given the prevalence of mainstream medical practices. Were there moments where you questioned this path?

LR: 27:39

Not at all. The second that I was able to get rid of that infection. I knew at that moment, it was an intuitive knowing for me that I needed to stay away from the Western medical system. Don't get me wrong, they have a place with acute conditions. That is what they are set up for. If you have a ruptured appendix, yes, go to the hospital. That is where they have their power. That is where their beauty shines. So I'm not saying never go to the hospital. I'm saying if you have a chronic condition, the Western medical system is not set up to handle chronic conditions. They don't know how to get to the root cause of illness. That's not what they're trained in. For myself, the second that I was able to uncover those two really powerful things very early on in life, I knew within every cell of my being that healing did not mean going to the Western medical system. And I never went back. I never had another antibiotic until I had my appendix rupture. And then there was no getting around that I was in the hospital for a week, right? But even then, the implications that it caused on my body to be on all of those antibiotics, with doctors not prescribing a good probiotic at the same time,,it's still not set up to really help people thrive in those instances, even, and so it's one thing, yes, go get the surgery if it's a necessity. And there are certain points where if someone is suicidal and the first step is, okay, take a medication, a small dose, in order to get you to a space where you're safe, understandable, but I just never went that route. I went through really deep, dark depressions and I did not put myself on anti depressants because I wanted to know why. Why was this happening and why was I so depressed? And so I never thought back once I got off of antidepressants when I was 17, never looked back. I sat through the darkness so I could uncover what was happening, right? And I think a lot of people though, they do have these I want to clarify that. I do think people have these hurdles with getting away from the western medical system because that's what they're taught. Like you were saying in the 80s, you saw a white coat and you assumed, oh, they're smart. They know so much more than me. They must know my body better than I do. And so I think a lot of people just have this mentality that they're doctors, they're smarter than me, they know me better when the reality is no one's ever gonna know your body better than you and what you're experiencing. And I think it takes a little bit of faith that there's a way to actually heal. And I think a lot of people are looking for a quick fix, which is what doctors do, because they mask the symptoms so you think they're gone. You think the problem's gone, but it's not. You're just masking the signal that your body's giving you that says, Hey, something's out of balance and they're masking the symptom, which is why everyone will just get worse at some point later down the road. I think people just assume that's the best way to do it and that's the only way and it takes just a little twist of maybe there is something better that I can be doing for myself and that's not easy for people to switch into.

PMD: 30:50

What an intricate dance this human existence is because we often find ourselves guided molded and influenced by the prevailing powers and that leads us to adopt a belief that someone else will take care of our concerns. Someone else will fix it. So we relinquish our responsibility and we shift it on to others or to external entities. It evoked memories or encountering medication advertisements in the US during the bygone areas of the seventies and eighties. I think it was the seventies, late seventies or eighties I had such a reaction to it because I thought to myself, wow, we don't have ads here in the UK because we have a socialized medicine and that prompts a reflection on societal structures that prioritize profit over people's wellbeing. And that realization prompts agreement because what's often labeled as healthcare can more accurately be described as sick care. It's like applying a band-aid to a gaping wound caused by a bullet and such interventions fail to address the broader implications of health issues because discomfort in one area may stem from underlying issues elsewhere in the body. I remember when I worked alongside a chiropractor. His holistic approach involved identifying spinal misalignments or subluxations of the spine and delving deep points of clients' lives to uncover potential instabilities and what was surprising were the correlations that emerge between your physical discomfort and life challenges, whether financial or emotional, which really underscored for me, the interconnectedness of mind, body and environment. And this holistic understanding paves the way towards healing as an individual can gain insight into their lifestyle choices and habits and in light of these insights, the conversation shifts towards the shortcomings of our traditional education. Because we are inculcated to follow a curriculum. which often prioritizes fulfilling economic goals over nurturing our emotional intelligence and understanding as an example, neurobiology. With these challenges the advent of the internet for me emerges as a beacon of knowledge although you've got to crawl through the crap because there's a sea of misinformation, but the value of individuals like yourself who possess firsthand experience and insight you've had boots on the ground. You've had a visceral experience you serve as a guide for those seeking authentic understanding even amidst of the noise of the digital age. In terms of actions, were there any specific actions you took to bridge the gap between the traditional and holistic approaches and how did your educational journey in this field contribute to your ability to assist others in taking control of their health?

LR: 34:18

I guess the way that I would say that best is I worked with people alongside their GP. So a lot of my clients did not feel comfortable just, getting rid of their GP and so that's where I bridged it where I'm like, okay, keep seeing your GP, but also trying to get them to understand that they needed to see the bigger picture of make sure your GP is on board with you actually getting better. If they tell you like, oh, I don't think you should be doing these modalities or you shouldn't be using XYZ or, saying that, oh, this isn't going to change. Then you needed a new GP, right? Because we need to get rid of the outdated system of the older generations who one way or a highway type of approach. And so I think that's where I bridged it with them. And I worked with a lot of people who had diabetes and got them off of their insulin. And a lot of them did have to switch general practitioners because they told them, Oh, you're never going to get off of this. There's no way. It's not possible. And when I showed my clients let me show you the rest of my clients who did get off of their insulin injections that was their turning point of let me find a better general practitioner. I think that's where I bridged it. Because I had pre diabetes. Even though I looked thin and healthy, I was pre diabetic. I was proof of myself hey, just because you're pre diabetic doesn't mean you have to keep going that direction. This is not a life sentence. So I think there was bridging the gap by my own proof and also showing people that there is a way and you need to be smarter and actually ask questions instead of just listening to your general practitioner, whatever former practitioner they were seeing. And going from there, I think that was like the only way that I bridged the gap. Because if it was my way, I would say, go find a naturopathic doctor who, yes, they're trained in Western medicine, but that is not their first approach. So if it came down to prescribing something, they could, but that's not going to be their go to. I had to learn to bridge it in some form because so many people just weren't willing to take the full leap of faith.

PMD: 36:19

During my training as a exercise referral practitioner I gained the expertise and the qualification to collaborate with a GPS with general practitioners and the medical community, focusing on lifestyle management and training protocols to help individuals. But the challenge lay in finding GPS who embrace this approach and many were not receptive at that time, although the landscape has since shifted and this shift is driven by what I see as an evolving understanding of the prevalence of stress-related illnesses, which account for a significant percentage of GP visits, I think it's over 90%. Reflecting on holistic and functional medicine, which underscores the interconnectedness of mind, body and spirit. Were there any pivotal moments that solidified your belief in this holistic paradigm. And if so, how did these experiences influence your philosophy and your application towards health and wellbeing.

LR: 37:30

Yeah, actually, this is a really great question because, my answer is not what people are talking about and it needs to be known and funny enough, literally after I started talking about it, I saw one of my favorite microbiologists has a speaker coming up and she's talking about the same thing. So I was like, yes, it's it's coming out. But I did all of the spiritual healing from a very early age, right? I was thrown in opposite. I learned the spiritual stuff before I learned how to be more human and actually take care of my human self. And I did the healing. I did the spiritual cleanses. I did the yoga therapy. I did the talk therapy. I did all of these different modalities to heal through the traumatic experiences as a child, but, the thing there is, I kept having episodes. I kept having aggressive outbursts. I kept getting depressed. I kept all these things. And in the world right now, we equate what happens to us spiritually creates a lot of dysfunction in the body. Because we store tension in different areas of the body. The reality is that experiences that you are physically having is coming from your body, not the emotional component, right? Not the trauma itself. When I realized that and I started diving into functional medicine. I started realizing that, Oh, my body's what's actually having the reactions, not the trauma that I experienced. That's done. That's in the past. My body is what needs to heal. And so I kept having these episodes. I kept getting these aggressive outbursts and I just thought man, I must've not healed through something from my past. Of course, that's what we think because that's what we start hearing so much. And sure enough, I get into functional medicine and I start finding out about certain genetic mutations that cause aggressive behavior. And I start finding out about certain bacterias that cause depression and aggressive behavior. And all these different things that I'm learning about the system and certain species and the whole nine yards. I won't go into that, but I start cleaning that up. I start fixing my body and start getting myself in order and the outbursts are gone that I don't have all of these things anymore and I'm sitting there going. Oh my God, like here I was continuously trying to focus on spiritual healing and trauma healing and all of these things and realizing that yes, there's a point to that because you need to sort through it and for the emotional factors, but your body is what's giving you the responses. Your body is what's feeling the depression. It's not the experience. It is your body. And so when I brought those two together and realized that a lot of what people are still experiencing mentally that they keep linking to their past is actually the physical responses that literally your gut microbiome, all these trillions of little bugs that live inside of you are causing because they have direct access to your brain and they're causing all of these symptoms. That was the biggest turning point of my practice because then I started working with people who thought, Oh, I have all these emotional wounds and I'm highly depressed and all of these things. And we just kept trying to like, okay let's figure out like, what have you not sorted through? Do you have, issues with your mom or do you still, like sorting through that? Then it switched my complete trajectory to let's work on the physical in order to overcome those traumatic experiences. And sure enough, people came back to me the way that I had that moment of, am I supposed to feel this way. This is my normal? Like I'm supposed to feel good? And then they realized that they were holding themselves back. It wasn't the trauma, it was what they were doing, their lifestyle their physical capacity to heal to actually be in a healthy body. If your body is not healthy, your neurological system is not going to be functioning properly, and you're going to continue firing the same neurons that were part of that trauma. So it is not the traumatic experience that's holding you back. It's the neurological programming that's just continuing to repeat and repeat over and over until you get your body in check and can actually create new wiring systems and come from a new place and create new trajectories. That was the most profound moment for me, where we have to understand the human body in order to actually heal on all levels, mind, body, and spirit. You can't have a clear channel with your guidance system, whatever that looks like, from an unhealthy body You want to bring it into like the forms of chakra systems, like we talked about the chakras. The reality is your organs are vibrational. We are energetic beings. That's a scientific thing. It's not this woo thing. We are energy and our organs have their own vibrational system. So we can call them chakras. You can call it whatever you want. The reality is if your body is not healthy, those are not going to be in their optimal vibration. So yes, there's going to be disharmony. We have to have a healthy physical body in order to overcome the rest.

PMD: 42:16

How does it feel to witness the positive impact of holistic approaches on individuals, especially considering the skepticism that can sometimes surround non conventional methods?

LR: 42:30

It's amazing because that someone knows that they're able to feel better. They want to share that with other people. It just becomes this big line of healing where it's just like someone starts feeling better and they can't help but share it with other people and other people notice it. And so it's beautiful to me to witness someone walking out of my practice and they feel good and they were in massive depressive episodes for 15, 20 years plus, or chronic health conditions for 30 years, and actually reaching a point where they even feel 30 percent better at the beginning. That alone, that 30 percent for them changes their life. And that 30 percent grows because then they're actually able to do things that they love and I might've mentioned this, but when you're doing what you love, you are emanating this healing vibration and that is the greatest gift that you can give this world. That is how the world will heal by you doing what makes you happy by you being able to play and have fun and laugh and be light. That energy is so healing and people are not aware of how impactful that is to every single person around them. And so I love it. I love seeing. the trickle effect in the world that it brings.

PMD: 43:43

When you engage in what truly resonates with your heart and you align with your authentic self to embrace your inherent nature. I know that this alignment grants your profound form of immunity, one may extends beyond mere physical wellbeing because it shields you from the shackles of old habits, old outdated habits or the constraints of familiar thought patterns and the tumult of unchecked emotions and this immunity operates on multiple levels manifesting in stages and states that permeate your being. But most discussions on immunity are confined solely to its physiological dimension. And I believe that this oversight prompts reflection on the realm of spiritual counseling, where profound facets of human existence come to light. My question to you is have you encountered any obstacles in incorporating spirituality into your counseling practice and how did you navigate skepticism or resistance from individuals with diverse beliefs?

LR: 44:54

I never experienced that because I always have been in that field. So if someone was coming to me, it was because of that, right? Because thanks to my first two near death experiences as a baby. It tapped me into my psychic abilities and my intuitive space so early on in life, I was having prophetic dreams since I was three years old and they only progress and got more intense. So I've always easily stepped into that world. I was always one foot out the door because it was easier for me to be in that realm than it was to be here on this physical plane. It's not for other people to believe. I believe that's not my goal in life is to make other people believe what I do Is to be me and the people who need me will find me and so it was never a battle for me. I did it from that space. I could tell people exactly what they needed to hear i've channeled for some people which was like a mind blowing thing for me to channel people's deceased loved ones, but it just happens. It's not a one size fits all. Someone who comes to me today is going to get something completely different from a person who comes next week. Because I'm tapping into their energy and giving them exactly what they need. And if someone's not supposed to come see me they're not going to I don't even blink an eye at that if people are skeptic, that's great. They're not my clients, and yeah,

PMD: 46:08

We're getting to the top of the hour. Do you have any parting words and where can people find you?

LR: 46:14

Parting words is to remind people to take your health into your own hands and to actually invest in yourself. This is a 3, 000 program easily that I'm offering for 50, right? But it's more about finding out who you are, what makes you tick, what makes you happy And really moving towards those things. I think there's a point to really ask yourself if you're not going to be happy in this life and kind of what's the point, right? We're here to evolve and grow as beings. So investing in yourself is going to be the best thing that you can do for yourself regardless. And I know it can be scary because it can shift your entire existence, right? When we really start looking around us we end up losing a lot of people in our lives because we're no longer going to be part of those groups. There's so many things that can happen while you're doing these shifts, but imagine what you can do in this life and what you want to do and to know that it's actually possible. Like it's not just a pipe dream. If you have a vision, it's for a reason and it's possible to follow it. And I think if you can just get your health in check the things that you can do is off the charts. And I'm actually writing a book called your health sets the tone. And the whole point is the fact that if you do not have a healthy body. It's going to trickle into every other aspect of your life and that is why there are so many unhappy relationships out there and people working in unhealthy jobs and it really comes back to because they themselves are not healthy and they're not well within themselves. When you become that light that you're emanating, that is what you're going to start attracting. And so even just making small shifts in your life, it's going to make a huge difference. You can find me at www. linrivers. com and it's l i n rivers. com so that's the easiest way to find me.

PMD: 47:53

I want to thank you Lin. Your journey and your insights have been truly captivating and I want to extend a heartfelt thank you for sharing your profound story and your resilience coupled with your diverse knowledge in holistic and functional medicine and spiritual counseling. It's clear to me, you're not just a practitioner, but you're a living testament to the transformative power of holistic approaches. Thank you, Lin.

LR: 48:21

Thank you so much for having me.