The MEN1 Mosaic

#44 - This Will Change How You See Chronic Disease Forever (Dr Erin Hayford: Naturopathic Doctor, Somatic Practitioner & Former Crohn's Disease Patient)

• Lizzie Dunn • Season 1 • Episode 44

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What if your chronic disease symptoms aren't just physical—but the result of a nervous system stuck in survival mode? In this deeply personal and thought-shifting conversation, I speak with Dr Erin Hayford, a naturopathic doctor and somatic practitioner who has lived on both sides of the healing journey. From being bedbound with Crohn’s disease to exploring what it really means to feel safe in your body, this episode dives into why trauma, people-pleasing, and misalignment with self can all play a role in how chronic illness expresses—and what can actually help.

Key takeaways:

How nervous system dysregulation affects chronic illness

The emotional root of symptoms (even in genetic conditions)

Why food fear and over-restriction might be doing more harm than good

A simple technique to reconnect with your body and calm your system

Learn more about Dr Erin Hayford and her work at:
https://www.drerinhayford.com

Join my MEN1 community & receive the free guide that helps keep me out of surgery, off medication and asymptomatic. Click here.

*Here I share my personal experience as a MEN1 patient. Nothing is intended to provide medical or holistic health advice. All opinions are personal, including those of my podcast guests. Always consultant a qualified medical professional.*

Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the MEN1 Mosaic podcast I am so excited to have with me today Dr Erin Hayford who is a naturopathic doctor and somatic practitioner Erin herself has a personal experience of illness healing illness coming through the stress and the trauma of that and so I'm really excited to kind of ask her so many questions about what it is like to sit on both sides of the desk in a manner of speaking so in the episode today we'll be covering topics like stress trauma the emotional side of illness as well as the physical how to feel safe in your body when it feels like it's attacking you and hopefully you'll come away with a few kind of tangible tips that can help take you to the next stage on your healing journey whether you're here as an MEN1 patient or you're just tuning in because you're interested so Erin firstly or Dr Erin I should say it is so exciting to have you on thank you very much for giving over your time it's really cool to have you here yes likewise thank you I'm so grateful for social media for connecting us because we live in very different parts of the world and I'm yeah I'm glad we could make this work and happy to talk to you today likewise likewise I wanted to ask you a question which I myself am not totally clear on and I'm hoping you'll be able to help me so you're a naturopathic doctor and yes it's a term that I've heard kind of used loosely I feel like maybe we don't have many in the UK maybe there are a few more in the US I'm not entirely sure can you explain to me and to listeners here what exactly is a naturopathic doctor and how does this differ from let's say conventional medicine but also other forms of more alternative medicine that are more commonly heard so functional medicine integrative medicine that kind of thing yeah that's a great question so it depends on a few you know the term is like you said used loosely and I think it can be used in many different ways depending on where you live and even in the US there's sort of a disparity in terms of how the term is used from state to state so in the I can speak from you know in the United States if you go to a naturopathic medical school it's a four-year degree or can be five depending on how long you take it's basically medical school but it's with a different lens it's a different philosophy a different paradigm that naturopaths are part of so we have the same background training in anatomy physiology all the basic sciences that you need to understand just how the body functions and also how disease occurs and what's happening when disease occurs we also have training maybe additional training that more conventional doctors don't have in nutrition obviously herbal medicine is not part of conventional training it's part of our training we do learn pharmaceuticals and how to prescribe and deprescribe also so we learn essentially all the kind of basic things that a conventional functional doctor would and then we have those additional modalities that we learn that are considered more alternative...…We also can learn homeopathy, things like craniosacral therapy, or manipulative type therapies like what a chiropractor would do. So we have a really big toolkit that kind of pulls from all these different modalities that can range again from conventional to really out there—you know, depending on your worldview. Like homeopathy, to some, is really woo-woo, and so we kind of learn the gamut of things. Functional medicine is similar in kind of—I would say—the philosophy of a naturopathic doctor is that the body can heal itself. So disease, illness, anything that is so-called malfunctioning in the body, or any symptom—anything that feels wrong or off—is not a sign that the body is broken or breaking. It's a sign that something in this self-healing mechanism has been thwarted or is blocked, or there’s something getting in the way of the body basically maintaining homeostasis and a baseline in the system. So our goal as a naturopath is to figure out: what is that blockage, and how do we work to heal and remove it? Versus maybe a more conventional approach, which would be just get rid of the symptom—suppress the symptom—which is kind of working more on the surface. Whereas naturopathic medicine is supposed to be rooted more in finding this root cause. And I think functional medicine is similar in that way, so there's some overlap there. So I think the difference between functional, integrative type providers is maybe just the modalities we use—like herbal medicine, etc. And so naturopathic doctors can really vary in the modalities they use and the approach they take. And again, especially here in the United States, some states don’t regulate the term, so someone could call themselves a naturopath and they got like a weekend certificate—which is a problem. That’s a big thing here in our country that we’re kind of grappling with—to get more regulation around that. But a naturopathic doctor or physician is classically someone who went to medical school and got that kind of training.

And what made you want to pursue the naturopathic line of medicine?

Yeah, so that ties into my own health journey. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, which is an autoimmune condition, in my early 20s. I had no prior—you know, like I grew up in the conventional medical system going to my regular general practitioner, and you know, the world of pharmaceuticals, all that sort of stuff. My family was not very oriented toward holistic or alternative medicine. When I got sick, that’s when I started to question, “Is this it? Is this my only option?” Because I was, like I said, in my early 20s, and the option provided to me was essentially, “You're going to be on medicine for the rest of your life. You’re probably going to have to have surgery.” You know, this trajectory was sort of laid out for me where I was like, that sounds terrible and I don’t want this. So I started to slowly but surely just pursue what else is there. I started studying nutrition. It was kind of like one piece led to another—like as I was studying nutrition, I started to learn about herbal medicine. Then, as I was studying herbal medicine, that’s when I learned that naturopathic medicine was a thing. And so I decided to go all the way, just because my interest in what was going on in my body made me want to basically learn as much as I could, so that I could figure out how to heal myself. And then, recognising as I was doing this work, that was my interest. I was really interested in, “Okay, this is really fascinating for myself, and now I want to give this to other people too.” So it just made sense to kind of go all the way and just keep going—keep figuring out what these layers are to why I was sick and how I could heal.

Amazing. And when you were on that journey and you were going through those layers, I'm going to presume that you found things that worked and you kept them and you stuck with them—and you probably found things that didn’t work and you let them go. Are you able to give listeners here an idea of the main things that helped you, that you’ve then been able to go on and share with your people, versus the things that you thought might work, or that we might hear about—buzzwords being bandied around, that kind of thing? We love a buzzword. You know, things that maybe didn’t work—or did work. I don’t want to sound biased. But yeah, tell me your journey in that respect.

Yeah, absolutely. So the reason I started with nutrition was because Crohn’s disease, for people who don’t know, is an autoimmune disease of the digestive system. So I asked my doctor—he gave me these heavy-hitting pharmaceuticals—and then essentially was like, “That’s it.” And I was like, “Well, what should I eat?” Because it’s my gut. You know, like as a 20-year-old, I’m sort of impressed that I had the wherewithal to ask that question. And his response was, “Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter. Just take your medicine.” And I think that for me was the little beginning lightbulb—where I was like, that doesn’t make sense. It’s my gut! What I’m putting into it seems like it should matter. So that’s why I started studying nutrition. The nutrition degree I got wasn’t really a full, complete degree—it was sort of teaching me about basic nutrition, what nutrients we needed, those kinds of ratios. But that kind of information wasn’t actually helpful for me, in terms of “get this much protein” or “get these nutrients.” That wasn’t the answer for me in particular.

So the nutrition piece actually fell into place later, when I was studying naturopathic medicine. Naturopaths are classically always talking about food allergies, food sensitivities, and all that sort of thing. I have mixed feelings about it, because I used to practise really traditionally—do traditional naturopathic medicine. I would do all the labs, prescribe things, all of that kind of work. But I’m now completely specialised in mind-body medicine, so I don’t do any of that anymore.

Part of the reason I don’t do that stuff anymore is because I would do things like food allergy testing and it would essentially just create a lot of food fear. It would make people’s world really small in terms of what they could eat, and it would make them really afraid of food. Because if you see something positive on a test—like you’re allergic to grapes or whatever—then you’re afraid of it, right? You don’t want to eat it anymore, because now you’ve got this connection: grapes make me sick.

And I say that—and also, I tested positive for an allergy to yeast: baker’s yeast and brewer’s yeast, which is in so many things. Alcohol, bread, those sorts of things. And that was phenomenally life-changing for me—to get that out of my diet. It continues to be a huge trigger for me. If I eat anything with yeast in it, I immediately feel inflamed. I can just tell it’s not sitting well in my system.

So it’s really tricky. On the one hand, yeast was life-changing for me. I needed that test, I needed to see that it was an allergy, I needed to get it out of my diet. But there were other foods I tested positive for—like strawberries, eggs, more typical allergies—and now I can eat them without a problem.

So I had to kind of heal my relationship with food because of a lot of that testing I did. It’s complicated, right? With the food piece, the nutrition piece—I think it’s crucial. And a lot of your listeners, I know, will understand that and be really dialled into it. I think it’s about finding the pieces that are a true blue allergy—really impactful on your system—versus the ones that are maybe just not agreeing with your system in the moment. It can feel good to take those ones out, but eventually the goal is to get them back in, or at least to heal that fear. Healing the food fear is really crucial as part of a healing journey.

So that one’s complicated.

I studied herbal medicine as well. There were a lot of things with herbal medicine that were helpful in terms of bringing my symptoms down, but they kind of acted more like pharmaceuticals. I’d take something for bloating or discomfort or pain in my gut, and it would alleviate that symptom—or something for energy or mood—and those things would help, but none of them were getting at the core of why I was sick.

So that came later in my journey. I was finding all these pieces that were alleviating symptoms, but the second I took them away, the symptoms came back. The herbs helped, the nutrition helped—but what I was really building towards in all of my studies was getting to mind-body medicine. Understanding that there was this deeper mind-body, nervous system connection going on in my illness. And it wasn’t until I started to look at that that I found the more permanent root of why I was sick. This all lands with me so well. In my own journey with MEN1, I’ve had a similar experience—particularly around food intolerances and allergies. You mentioned the expression “food fear,” which I hadn’t heard anyone else use before, but as soon as you said it, it really landed. It’s a difficult thing to navigate, because when you know something isn’t working for your body, that head knowledge can easily turn into anxiety. And suddenly, the thing you thought would help—like cutting out certain foods—starts to cause more stress than the food itself.

It’s such a fine line. I think a lot of people listening who are dealing with MEN1 are probably tuned in to gut health. Many of us are beginning to understand how crucial that is for overall wellbeing. But as you’ve said, it can be taken to an extreme. And when it creates fear, that fear becomes the very thing we’re trying to heal in the first place.

Thank you for naming that—and I actually want to pick up this thread and run with it, because I know a lot of your work now is about helping people heal fear. I’m using the word “fear,” but I know others might describe it as stress, or trauma. Can you explain how that fits into the work you do today? I know you have a healing framework that’s come from your own experience. Where does emotional health sit within that, and how might it help someone in a way they haven’t yet considered? yeah that’s such a great question so i mean i think even the food piece is a great example of that where like the food fear is a mind body connection right because you’re connecting something you’re cognitively seeing which is the food and you have this correlation of like that makes me sick and then it creates this reaction in your system and so that you know that’s a direct like okay i think something i believe something and then there’s an impact on my system so you know the mind body connection the emotional connection our nervous system is wired to everything in our whole body right it touches every literal organ system every cell it’s the computer system you know to say it in sort of like unflattering terms that runs who we are and so the nervous system is the brain and then it’s the spinal cord and all of the nerves that emanate from that and there’s different functions of the nervous system but to break it down into really kind of basic building block terms we have what we call the rest and digest side of things this is the relaxed calm grounded side of our nervous system this is the state in which our body is able to as it sounds relax digest food so if we’re not in that state our digestive system doesn’t really work all that well it’s where we can heal it’s where cells turn over and regenerate and replenish so this rest and digest state is the state we need to be in in order for our body to do what it needs to do to heal and to be in a state of baseline when we get stressed or when we face fear or we get triggered or something stressful or even traumatic is happening our nervous system switches over into what we call fight or flight and i’m sure everyone’s heard of that by now it’s well known what this is so it’s fight flight freeze fawn is kind of how our system can shift into one of these different states and what’s happening when we shift into that state is our system is getting us ready to literally fight the threat run away from it which is flight freeze is when we think we can’t win we can’t fight it we can’t get away from it so we shut down and fawning is this newer response that we’re learning about which is essentially people pleasing where we try to appease the threat and make it happy and do what it needs in order for the threat to go away so our nervous system is literally all the different nerves and neurochemicals everything that it’s doing switches when we go into that state and in that state whether we’re in fight flight freeze or fawn our body can’t heal the healing mechanisms are on pause our digestive system shuts down because it’s like you need to survive we’ll eat the cheeseburger later don’t worry about that right now our immune system which is pertinent to us autoimmune folks becomes altered it functions differently literally every body system shifts into a survival state of how do we help you get away from the threat and then once the threat is gone we come back into rest and digest back to healing and healthy baseline the problem is first of all for those of us who experience trauma that’s the nature of trauma it shifts us into fight or flight and we often don’t come out of it or we’re more often than not in that state because our traumatic experience has programmed our nervous system to be on high alert way more than it otherwise would be the other reality is we live in a world right now where everything is stressful the news is traumatizing we’re in traffic all the time people are angry and dysregulated and so many of us are just in chronic stress we work all the time there’s just so much going on and so even regardless of trauma our nervous systems are often in survival mode and that is not a state in which healing can occur so we’re constantly inundating ourselves with cortisol and stress hormones and our body is physiologically not in a healing state and over time that’s going to change how our body functions so if our immune system is chronically shifted into that state it starts to malfunction so to speak you can’t drive a car without putting oil in it it’s going to break down you have to maintain it let it rest refill the fluids all the things so that’s the way i talk about how and why chronic illness has this really important mind body connection we need to be looking at because like in my experience if i changed my diet took herbs did all the things it would calm down my symptoms but the second i stopped the symptoms came back because the nervous system that’s running the body is still saying you’re not safe and it’s still altering digestion and immune function so until i got into the nervous system and started calming it down reprogramming it helping it shift out of survival everything else was just a band aid it was calming the result of an overactive system that’s why i see the nervous system and mind body work as so foundational and yet it’s so often overlooked when talking about the root causes of illness.  It's really interesting and I love that you talk about the nervous system and you know how this interacts with the rest of the body because. I know from my experience, it wasn't until I branch out of conventional traditional medicine into more alternative kind of paths. And even then, we are talking like getting like way out of like functional medicine. We're talking the wacky, the the WOOWOO healing. That's when I first really understood about the nervous system and it interaction with the rest of the systems and the body and learning that actually, I think as you explained with. Things like diet and all of that being like a bandaid, when actually the nervous system is, in its fight or flight response the whole time. I know I had a similar experience. I was taking supplements and all of this, and actually all I know is that like when I'm stressed, like none of that is making a difference. It really isn't. So I'm really glad that you've explained that. And it certainly landed with me. It made me want to ask you a question. Maybe this kind of relates to your experience as well. I think with illness particularly when it's something like Crohn's or me, n one where there's a little more reticence to look at it as a condition that's just brought on by being unhealthy because actually it can happen to seemingly very healthy people. And in MEN1 there's a a strong kind of like genetic factor. It can feel as though the, like our body is working against us, if that makes sense. And so it's almost what's the point? Because actually it's just programmed to like, not help me out. There's no point like, doing anything. Do you work with people who have that kind of approach and did you ever feel that yourself where you're like, you know what I, I can't do anything because like I can't win. Totally, yes. I love this question because this is the heart and soul of my work essentially. When I first got sick, yeah. 
It ru it like, it to me felt like it ruined my life. And I apologize for my throat. I'm getting over pneumonia, so I'm like hacking and coughing over here. So I, yeah, I was 20, 21. I couldn't go to college. I couldn't hang out with my friends. I was very anemic, so it I had to stay in bed. I could barely, if I ate something, it immediately went through me. I just was in pain, like who, like what 20-year-old is getting a colonoscopy and taking medication, like several medications and like laying in bed like it, I just felt like my life as I knew it was over. And as I said, I had been given this trajectory of this is the best we have to offer you is these pills and then you're gonna have to have surgery. It was just like, it's not really gonna get better, was the message I was given. And so at that time, like if someone said to me at that time, what I say to people now, which is that illness is happening for a reason and all this I, which I'll get into, I probably would've been very mad at them. Like I would've been like offended because I was like, this is ruining my life. How are you telling me that there's some like beautiful meaning and purpose in this? But that was, I think the, so in retrospect, I can now see. My illness took me out of life, which it tends to like illness tends to take us out of life. It creates a barrier for us to engage in life in the way we used to, in, in some way. Like to varying degrees. Some of us are completely out I was like, I couldn't do anything. Some of us have some things we can't do as well. Like I have a podcast that I was just talking to somebody where he. Was a bicyclist and he like couldn't get on his bike because of his illness. He could do other things, but he couldn't do this one thing he really loved. There's varying degrees to which illness gets in the way of life. And now, again, in retrospect, I can see that was the point because I. The way I was living my life up to that point, I was raised by a people pleaser and a narcissist. So I had this dynamic modeled for me of your needs don't matter, make. So it's like the fond response that I was like constantly in make everyone else happy, keep. Keep everyone happy, keep the the anger away appease the narcissistic parent. Make sure that they're, make sure they're happy so that no, nothing scary or harmful happens. So my nervous system was like, from day zero, from moment zero, just primed in this environment in which I was told like, the world isn't safe unless the people around you are happy and it's your job to do that. So everything in my life was reflecting that the relationships I had, the friendships I had, the way I was showing up to life was just this constant who do I need to be to make everyone happy? How do I need to show up in the world to keep it safe? And, I, I like wasn't myself, I didn't really know who I was. I was going to school the school that my sister went to. I was just like doing what other people did. 'cause I thought that's what it meant to be a person, right? Was to just do what everyone wanted. So when I got sick, I couldn't do any of it anymore. It took me out of that life and it forced me into bed and I like had to just, like I said, I couldn't do the normal things and I had, I was, I felt very different from everyone else in my life and it put me on this different path that I probably wouldn't have been on otherwise. Where then I started to study health related things, right? Nutrition, herbal medicine. All the way to where I am today. And it was because of that illness and that journey that I started to recognize I'm not living my life. Like for me, like I don't even know who I am, like I am who everyone else needs me to be. I'm behaving in this way that is completely ignoring. What I, I would have these like feelings in my body that would feel uncomfortable where I'd say yes when I really wanted to say no, or I didn't wanna do something, but I would force myself to do it anyway. Because again, I was just so in this mode of that's what you have to do to be safe and to survive. So I was ignoring these inner like discomforts in my body because I didn't know how to, I didn't feel safe doing anything else. And so it's almost as if the illness was this huge, this finally like big internal, I. Message in my system that was like, okay, if you're not gonna stop, we're gonna stop you because this is not sustainable. This is not why you're here. To even take it a point further, like it's almost as if that the illness like had to happen. It all had to happen in this way so that I could, I. Learn what I learn in order to teach other people. That's how I see it now. So I got to that point of recognizing, yeah, just like my childhood trauma, the way I was showing up in the world, like how I was so off track of who I really am and how misaligned I was with what is like true for me, basically worked really, did lots and lots of therapy, lots of trauma work, lots of intensive psychotherapy type stuff to like. Deprogram, all of that, and to really start to get into line with who I really am. And that is when my symptoms started to go away. And at this point I consider myself in remission. I. I haven't, I have, like I said, if I eat yeast or if I do these, if I get stressed, like I'll have these little like twinges, but full blown Crohn's disease I have not had for a decade at this point. And as I said, it was when I was doing that intensive, like getting rid of the fake. Like the fake self, the false self, and really stepping into who am I really? What do I really want? That's it was almost like the symptoms I like forgot that I was even sick because they just naturally stopped existing in my life. And so that's where I recognized every time I was engaging in those behaviors that were not me. Like when I was people pleasing and saying yes when I meant no. And all of those kinds of ways in which I was programmed by my traumatic experiences to show up in the world. I. The that behavior, those behaviors, those thoughts, those feelings, that ignoring of myself was sending this signal to my nervous system. You're not safe. You're not safe. You're not safe. That's why you're behaving this way. Because if you were safe, you wouldn't be pretending to be somebody else. Essentially, you would be living your life. So every time I showed up in that way and I sent that signal to my nervous system, it kept my body in survival mode. And as soon as I started to step into and behave in ways that were more aligned with who I am, my nervous system was like, oh, okay. You must be safe now because you're actually like. Living, you know your truth, you're speaking your truth. You're showing up in this way that feels authentic. You're not ignoring yourself. You're not pushing yourself beyond what feels comfortable and good to you. There's this resonance we have, right? And you might call it soul. I don't know. It's your innate self, right? And it has a certain resonance to it. You can feel when you're, I think we all ha have that awareness of that discomfort of when we're pushing ourself, like outside our boundaries or just not living. We're not happy, we're depressed, we're tired. There's just a feeling of when we're off track and when we start to match up with it again and get in line with it again. That's when the nervous system is okay, you're safe because. It's only when we feel really safe and secure that we can show up in that way. And it takes a lot of that work to peel back those layers in those programs of like, how did we get programmed to not be that person? How did we, how do, how are we told that person wasn't okay or wasn't safe or isn't acceptable? And what are these layers in these masks that we put on because of it that we need to then deprogram to release? At this point, my framework, I, it's called Sacred Illness because I think of illness as this sacred invitation to basically examine like, how am I off track? How am I not in alignment with myself? How am I not in resonance with my, again, soul, higher self, whatever you wanna call it. Because if I was in alignment, my nervous system wouldn't be in this survival mode. That is then creating the conditions in which illness occurs. And that is, I think the invitation that illness presents to us is, excuse me, to examine that. Like where am I off track? When did that happen? Most of it's not our fault. A lot of it is cultural and familial programming. Traumatic experiences, et cetera. Like we didn't ask for any of that, right? But it becomes our work through this invitation of illness to begin to examine what is that program that's running in my system that's telling me that I'm not safe, and how do I begin to deprogram that and step into alignment? With what I really need to heal. And sometimes that can mean, really changing our lives and our relationships. Like the people and the things I used to do are completely not who or what I do now, right? Like it was a complete revolution of my life. So it can be hard work. But that's the journey I went on and that was ultimately again, what kind of led to my symptoms alleviating and healing was getting into alignment in that way. I think it's amazing that you are able to express with such clarity and context from your own experience with illness, like how emotional unease within yourself from childhood that you then carried forward through like how that then manifested physically in your body. And I know. So anyone who's listening to a conversation like this for the first time, it is gonna sound completely out there. Like you might be thinking like, what are these two taking? This is so weird, but. I have to say from my own experience, like when I first had that told to me initially there was some resistance. I was like, no, this is this is one of the like one to 3% of genetic diseases that like has nothing to do with, the way I live my life or anything. Like I was born with this, I have not no responsibility in this and I think. Staying within this space and actually realizing how empowering it was to understand that I had some control. And for anyone who's listening and not watching, I put control in inverted commas just because that is such a kind of a difficult word to use when it comes to disease. And it was gonna lead me onto my, to my final question, Dr. Aaron, for you, which is in the instance of someone you know with MEN1 or Crohn's or whatever it might be. And they really feel like yeah, their body's working against them. They don't feel like. They can really trust their body, if that makes sense. Is there, are there any kind of really tangible practices or things other than those you've mentioned, I know you've talked about things like, we've talked about diet, nutrition and that sort of thing, but from a kind of nervous system point of view, is there anything that you share with your clients? Whether it's like a kind of daily habit or anything like that someone could take away from this episode and know that actually they're gonna have just that tiny little bit more control when they're able to practice this this little act or habit as they say. Yeah, absolutely. So I think first of all, totally echoing what you said. Like I know this is a big pill to swallow for people who are new to this sort of mentality. And so I just wanna validate that and say that is, like I said if someone said this to me when I was sick, and still in my like more conventional medicine mindset or just not exposed to like different ideas or whatever. I would've been offended, honestly, like I would've been like, this is ruin my life. How dare you tell me this stuff. So if you're having that kind of reaction, just know that's understandable because it is hard to think of this in any terms other than as a threat. And that leads me into kind of the thing that I would encourage you all to try if you're new to this, or even if you're open to these ideas, one of the really important things that we can do with our symptoms. Is to begin to reframe them as not a threat because we can get into this situation where, first of all we're living our life, right? And then we get sick, and then the sickness itself can become a stressor, obviously, right? Like symptoms are stressors. If they can feel scary, like we can have these thoughts and feelings of oh my gosh, like what does this mean? Or where is this leading? Or, what's the next symptom that's gonna happen? We just start to develop this kind of adversarial relationship with our body where it's my body's failing me. I don't trust it. That can push us further. It's almost becomes like a self perpetuating vicious cycle at that point because we're creating a stress response in our body in response to our body, and it just goes and goes. And so I would encourage folks to begin to just get curious. I think curiosity is a really helpful word because it doesn't have to mean like liking it or hating it. It's just this sort of neutral, can we just start to get curious about our symptoms? And there's this there's a tool or technique called somatic tracking. Where somatic, so somatic being like body and tracking is you're just tracking what the body is doing. So you essentially, if you're having a symptom, let's say you're having abdominal pain or something, if you can just close your eyes and tune into that sensation in your system. What I always encourage folks to do is see if you can just find the boundaries of it. Like how tall is it? How deep is it? How wide is it? Like where is it taking up space in your system? Give it a color. Is it red? Does it seem red? Or does it feel black? Or maybe there's no color. There doesn't have to be. Does it feel heavy? Like, how would you describe it? Is it burning? Is it itchy? Is it ticklish? Is it whatever, right? Just describe how it feels in your system. Then you just sit with it for a moment. So you're just feeling that sensation, you're feeling that shape, you're feeling where it takes up space in your system. You're feeling the sensation of that sys of that symptom. And really what you're trying to do is shift this mentality from it's a symptom and it means this. And like the fear that can start to build off of that and just shift into experiencing it purely as a sensation. Okay, there's this heavy sensation in my gut. You just sit with it and see if you can give it permission to do what it wants to do. Like it's again, that curiosity of if I just sit with it and watch it like I'm watching tv, can I just be this neutral observer where my body is the container of this symptom? Can I just watch it and see what happens next? And as you're sitting with it and watching it, and if you start to find that it's like moving or growing or shifted or like changing locations or shrinking. As you're like sitting with it and breathing with it and trying to like, oh, I use this phrase, relax around it. So like usually when we have a symptom, we're like, oh, like we tense around it, or we get stressed, or we our body can start to shut down around it if we can relax around it and give it permission to move. And then if it does, move it, if it does change. Allow that change that you're feeling in your body to be some sort of signal to you that it's not at least a hundred percent physical. Because if it was a hundred percent physical, it would stay exactly where it was. It wouldn't change locations, it wouldn't change at all. It would just be right there in your system. But if you start to experience it like moving or growing, or if emotions start to come up, or sometimes people have like memories pop up when they do this work. This is like somatic work 1 0 1. It's starting to give you clues of there's some emotion attached to this, or there's some memories attached to this, or if it's moving, then it's, there's something else going on here that's not just physical. I want that to just see how that can allow you to maybe crack a little bit into this mindset of it's physical and it's harmful and it's, my body's failing me. And try to see it as it's this communication, it's this thing that's holding something, it's holding information. There's maybe more here than meets the eye, and if I just sit with it and allow it to move around in my system, if I get curious about it, like what happens next, basically if I just ask that question like, what happens next? What? What do I notice if I just sit with it in this more neutral way? That's how we begin to open up communication with our system and we start to understand, or at least just have a different relationship with it. And the idea of somatic tracking is as we're like tracking and feeling the sensation in our body, it starts to take away some of that fear of okay, it's not just destroying my body. It's not just like my body failing me like. It just feel, you can just get a sense of there's maybe something more to this and what happens if I start to be curious versus shutting it down, fighting against it, closing it off. I'll just leave it with this, where the body symptoms if we start to think of like the body and symptoms as trying to get our attention, if they're trying to get our attention, if we're willing to switch into that mindset, what happens if we just, even in the slightest bit, get a little bit curious and a little bit willing to just be with it. Allow it to be there and see what happens next. And anything that starts to come up can start to give you that information of okay, maybe there's something more here. And then, we can take it from there in terms of like how we explore it or sit with it. But that's a, a kind of a basic exercise that we can do to start to open that door into this like other world essentially. I really love that particularly what you said about trying not to see the symptom. As purely physical, but like emotional as well. Because if it were physical, then it would change. It wouldn't change. It would stay exactly the same. And that's for me, that's that's blown my mind. Really it has. And I, all I know is anyone listening back to this is probably gonna feel the same now because to see symptoms and to see illness, disease. In such a different light is so refreshing. I know that from my own experience. I know that from what listeners have told me. And I am certainly very grateful for the time that you've so generously given to this podcast, to this episode. 
And I wanna thank you and just say, all the best with all the work that you were doing. It's absolutely incredible. You really are helping like shift, paradigms completely with medicine and. And also personally as well, the emotional journey, which we talked about as as being, really part of disease, of illness.And I'm very grateful for your time. So thank you. 
Thank you so much, Lizzie. It's been such a pleasure. I could talk about this all day, so I appreciate the opportunity.
Likewise. And I'm, hopefully we'll have you back on at some point in the future
too. Yes, please. I'd be happy to.