Rich & Wendy 0:00
Welcome to a special episode of Conversations with Rich Bennett. This is a part of our part of our recovery, 12 days of hope, our mission to raise money for Raijigan's addiction. My co-host Wendy Beck and I will be sharing powerful stories of addiction, recovery, and resilience to help break the stigma and show that hope is always possible. Your Your support helps Raijigan's addiction provide life-changing resources, and you can donate right now by visiting our GoFundMe link in the show news. We are so grateful you've joined us on this important journey. Now let's get into today's conversation.
Rich Bennett 0:39
Wendy and I have a young lady on who, of course like all the other other episodes in recovery. We have Elizabeth Kip on. I guess I should have asked you beforehand. Do you go by Elizabeth or Beth?
Elizabeth 0:52
Oh, I can't
Rich Bennett 0:53
For Liz.
Elizabeth 0:54
find Elizabeth. Yeah, well my mother called me Liz but I go by Elizabeth. Oh, I'll go by Liz.
Rich Bennett 0:59
Okay.
Elizabeth 1:00
Liz or Liz but Elizabeth and but if somebody says Beth, I don't even know, I just don't even recognize that. I just like, no, it's funny. I don't recognize the backup in the name, but I recognize the front end. Isn't that interesting? Where it is? Yeah.
Rich Bennett 1:19
I answer to anything. Alright, so Elizabeth, I always like to kick it off because Wendy tells me too.
Wendy Beck 1:28
But
Rich Bennett 1:30
so with, but we'll get into the recovery part but the addiction part because your addiction is a little bit different than some others. When did the addiction start and what was
Elizabeth 1:44
the addiction? Well, ultimately the addiction was to chronic pain to a stress habit ultimately.
Rich Bennett 1:52
Mm-hmm.
Elizabeth 1:53
I had an injury when I was well, I kind of grew up in a dysfunctional family. So that was really what started that stress pattern. And then I had an accident when I 14 and broke the fifth lumbar on my spine and the bone broke front to back. So it pulled the nerve, like nerves with it. And I was already so used to a stress pattern that when I actually was able to walk away from that accident and I didn't, it didn't register, it registered as pain, but it didn't register as a freaking park of bone. I didn't register at that level. And I didn't know until seven years later,
Rich Bennett 2:35
right?
Elizabeth 2:35
It had difficulty walking up stairs that I and saw a doctor and he took an x-ray and said you got an old injury and I went oh I know what that was, right? So
Rich Bennett 2:46
Wow.
Elizabeth 2:47
yeah, so I went 14 years between that accident and surgery without it, but it there was just a lot of pain near. And finally, I had surgery, but it took four surgeries to stabilize that slip. And they've, you know, there's hardware in there which is really really miraculous. And
I had when I, when I, at that time, before 19,
1982 was one I had my first surgery and they started me on opiates then opiates and benzodiazepines because I was so, I was in so much pain and I and I had such a reaction to the pain. That's why they they added the benzodiazepines. But I was, anyway, there's a lot of surgeries and every time I had surgery, the pain got worse and the dose went up of course. And I ended up on, on a prescription opiates and benzodiazepines for 31 years. The last 15 years of those was,
Rich Bennett 3:58
wow,
Elizabeth 3:58
fentanyl and out of them. And so I really am truly and I wasn't just a little dose. it, I'm really truly a
Rich Bennett 4:11
So
Elizabeth 4:11
miracle. We're miracles, but I mean since that's, it's quite unusual.
Rich Bennett 4:15
Right.
Elizabeth 4:16
Right. Anyway, so I got to a point where I was so sick and I, and I realized that the pain medicine was, was causing a lot of trouble. I didn't really understand it at the time. But I, I, I understood, I didn't understand all the details, but I understood it was causing difficulty. I went to my prescribing doctor and said, you know, let's get off this and and he said, well, we'll put you in a coma. And I was like, well, how many patients have you done that with that? He said, none. And I'm like, I'm not going to be, you're just like any pig. So like, that's not okay. So,
Wendy Beck 4:59
So
Elizabeth 5:03
Well, that was this plan. And I didn't, anyway, I didn't go for that. However, I located a doctor at the Betty Ford Center who had a pain management program, who had taken many patients off this cocktail of an opiate abenzo, and he knew about fentanyl. So, and at that point, it was like, I just, really, that was at that bottom we talk about. I just didn't have anywhere else to go. I couldn't get all. I tried to get a guy that three quarters of the way down off my Pius dose and I just couldn't get any further. And so, anyway, I went to the Betty Ford Center into this pain management program with Dr. Peter Prescott back in 2013, and Dr. Prescott passed away in 2016, but he had this amazing program. And there were a lot of us. There were 20 of us when I was there in the program, 20 of us in the program, 100 patients on campus, 20 of us were in pain track. The other 80 were straight up, went to relapse school in the afternoon, 20 of us went to pain track. And so, what was interesting about that program was, I survived the detox, which was about 10 days in a chemical dependency hospital part of the Betty Ford Center, they have a little place where they put people when they're doing that. And then, this was the thing. I had all had pain 40 years of chronic pain. And I remember getting well enough to get out of the bed. But I was so weak from 10 days in a detoxing in the bed. You know, you're just going to be weak. And so they kind of, I had just enough strength to stand up and get in the wheelchair that they had for me. And I noticed something. I noticed that I didn't have any pain in my back. Like, it was shocking because I was gone. I was like, what the heck is this? It was great. And I had a lot of pain in my gut. But the pain in my back, which had taught me for so long was gone. And at the end of, and I was in that program for 52 days, including that 10 days of detox. And I walked out of there. I walked in with 40 years of chronic pain. And I walked out of there 52 days later with no pain. Estimate
Rich Bennett 7:40
it.
Wow.
Elizabeth 7:42
And--
Rich Bennett 7:43
You said you had pain in your stomach.
Elizabeth 7:45
I had gotten a lot of good pain. Oh yeah, that was from the opiates, sure. Yeah, right? So opiates.
Rich Bennett 7:52
Okay.
Elizabeth 7:53
Yeah, opiates just for general education. The opiates do not heal chronic pain.
it--
There's no evidence that shows that. They'll
Rich Bennett 8:05
Yeah,
Elizabeth 8:05
help us deal with a stress of a traumatic injury, but they don't heal chronic pain. But what they do is they repress the breath. So now we're not getting, you know, releasing toxins out of the lung and we're not getting fresh oxygen back in. It dehydrates us, and now we're not getting fluids that the cells need just to like function properly. And it represses the, and it paralyzes the gut. So now whatever food you're eating isn't getting digested. And anybody you talk to that's been on opiates will tell you that they had a referring case of constipation, right? And now all those, none of those things are healing.
Rich Bennett 8:57
Me.
Elizabeth 8:57
Right? Opiates are really, really useful when I had a kidney stone. I had a four millimeter kidney stone, which took me to my knees. And that was very helpful to have a shot of dilated in the hospital. That's all I needed, but I was so charged up and shook up from that level of pain that there's no resting there. And so if you've got it so much trauma that you can't, you know, you can't calm down. Opiates are useful. That they're not, it's not a chronic pain solution. Chronic pain changes the brain, fundamentally. It changes the brain, it creates chaos. It's a messes with the emotional center. So now we've got super negative mind and we're very reactive. Our stress response is out of balance. It's in the on position and never goes into the off position. So we're hyper vigilant. Opiates don't address any of those problems.
Rich Bennett 10:05
Right.
Elizabeth 10:05
But my doctor is the only doctor that understood
Rich Bennett 10:08
that.
This whole,
Elizabeth 10:09
A post-credit call, or a post-credit call. It was, it was a post-credit call, so all the doctors that I went
Rich Bennett 10:13
right.
Elizabeth 10:13
to up until when I met Peter was they said literally said, you can't heal from chronic pain. Hear are your opiates and benzos. This is the best quality of life that you can have. And I, I'm going to just talk for just another moment to get this point across I had a. Very fortunate to have been trained as a research scientist. And so I knew when they said that you can't heal from chronic pain, I knew that they had forgotten their basic science. Western science operates in a scientific framework. Scientific framework is about probabilities, not facts. And so I knew that he made these doctors were making an error and that they had forgotten the framework that they were working into in the limitations of it. And, and their orientation in it. And that they were telling me more about the limitation of the bodies, if they're model, then they were telling me about the body's ability to heal. Because science can only comment on that which it can observe, measure and describe. But where do we
Rich Bennett 11:28
Right.
Elizabeth 11:28
live? We live in the all it is. Not just the part that science can observe, measure and describe. It only speaks to that little piece of it. But we live in the all that is so we heal and the all that is and I knew that they were working with a limited model. And that I was going to have to reference the all that is in order to find my healing. And when I met Dr. Presscop, he understood that he was a holistic healer. He was a gigong healer, he brought in all this stuff. So it was he was Western trained, but he also had he was accessing a larger part of respect from.
Rich Bennett 12:09
So this blows me away, though. They whole time with the with the pain, the doctors were still prescribing this stuff to you.
Elizabeth 12:19
That was their answer.
Well, okay. Now, let's understand something here. I think it's really important because I hear your I hear your, your oh my God kind of thing. And I understand that
Rich Bennett 12:36
and their
Elizabeth 12:38
training, the doctors that I was working with you. Seriously, their training was limited and and they were the Dr. Presscop had a whole different, he was for certified in a whole bunch of
Wendy Beck 12:54
different.
And
Elizabeth 12:58
I was dealing with I was dealing with a farm day and I was dealing with orthopedic doctors, they're not training chronic.
didn't even understand neuroplasticity until the 90s
Wendy Beck 13:13
We
Elizabeth 13:13
and this all started for me in the in the early 80s.
Rich Bennett 13:19
Right.
Wendy Beck 13:19
Can I ask a question? You said that you were addicted to the opioids and the benzoes and fentanyl. Was the fentanyl something that was prescribed or was that a
Elizabeth 13:30
no it was all prescribed.
Oh God. Yeah, fentanyl is used is used as a prescription. Yeah, sure. It's used. I had a, oh, this is another story. I had a, so I got clean in 2013 and then
Rich Bennett 13:53
in,
Elizabeth 13:53
oh, I don't know, maybe six years later, I had a compression fracture in my spine. And, and it was right at the long, it was quite, it was quite painful. And I went to my doctor and, you know, we took an X-ray and you say, yeah, you got a fracture here and compression fracture and, and, and he said, well, he said, you know, we can give you a kite because he knew I was I was in recovery. And he said, well, we can give you a kifoplasti. And that'll stabilize the bone and the kifoplasti is when they inject like a human super grew into the, into the break areas and it solidifies the break so that it keeps it stable and, and I was like, this sounds great. Yeah, he said, it'll help with the pain and I said, that sounds great. So, so here's what happened. So that was all the information that I had and, and I went into preop that morning, just before the procedure and the nurse comes in and says, we're gonna give you verse said and fentanyl. And I'm like, what a verse said is a benzo. And I was like, what are we recovering from that stuff? And he said, well, we don't have to give it to you. And I was like, hang on. If you're gonna put me through a procedure where I need fentanyl and verse said to get through it, give it to me. Just don't give me any after, right? And I thought to myself,
Rich Bennett 15:21
right.
Elizabeth 15:22
I had to myself, oh man, I am walking right back into the fire of the dragon. And I didn't know whether I was gonna make it out, without being like all charged up and messed up again. And back in that frequency of addiction. And I just, I just surrendered. I just surrendered into my higher power like I had nowhere else to go anyway. And I just stayed as present as I could and just allowed the process. And I had to ask for fentanyl and verse in three times during that procedure just to get through it. And I got through it and I never felt even remotely high. I just, it was like I just, it just took care of like me being able to sit still. The lie's still long enough for them to put all that stuff in my back. And I just don't like natals in my back. Oh my God, I hate that so much. I'm gonna hit so many of them. So it was really creepy. Anyway, I got done with the procedure. And you know what happened? No cravings. It was astonishing to me.
Rich Bennett 16:34
No cravings.
Elizabeth 16:36
No cravings. No cravings. It was just like, I was just like, you know, we talk about this recovery where the burden is coming out. Where the burden, the craving thing is lifted. And it hit literally the obsession. But it literally was. It wasn't even in my field. I was just, I just felt like I'd been I'd just I feel like grace just chased me as been chasing me my whole life. I just been, it's just an extraordinary.
Rich Bennett 17:04
The one thing I don't understand. And especially with doctors, and you mentioned it with the chronic pain. Your prescriptions, they're giving you. And you said it. It does. It's not going to heal you. It's just masking the pain. But the one thing I don't understand throughout all the years and the technology we've had that has come along. You know, they can burn nerves and everything and the pain is in the nerves. I'm surprised they haven't figured out a way to somehow or another just pause those nerves. Especially when you went back for that other surgery, how they could they could pause those nerves. So you wouldn't feel the pain.
Elizabeth 17:45
You're you're you're going to miss understanding happening there.
Rich Bennett 17:49
So. Okay, what's that?
Elizabeth 17:50
So.
So sometimes in some and some situations, nerve blocks are appropriate. However. This is a brain processing situation. Chronic pain is is a brain processing thing. It's it's it's that part of the body. So I want you to understand something
here, which I find amazing and and and and Dr. Prescott understood this fundamentally.
If you had three people with x-rays that looked just like mine and you're all may referencing the x-ray. You're just looking at the break in the back. And all the problems there because that's where the pain's coming from. If you're only looking at that injury. And you've got these three patients. One patient will have pain all the time. Another patient will have pain only when they're stressed and the other patient won't have any pain at all. How do you explain that just by looking at the x-ray? You can't.
Rich Bennett 19:11
I don't see
Elizabeth 19:12
You
Rich Bennett 19:12
you.
Elizabeth 19:12
can't. So you can't approach chronic pain as a reductionist. You can't from a reductionist point of view. It's a whole full body situation. It's a mind body spirit deal. I wrote a whole book on it. I Peter wrote a book to Dr. Prescott wrote a book called Concern Chronic Pain and Innovative Mind Body Approach. I wrote a kind of a follow up to that. Concern of it's the ways of chronic pain tools to reclaim their healing power. And it's kind of the patient manuously. These are the tools I use. This is what it was less is the voice of a chronic pain patient. This is what's going on in the mind of a chronic pain sufferer. And this is how we got through it. So it's it's it's more than just the back issue. There's a whole situation going on, which is which is another problem. Why must Western medicine is amazing at trauma at like a car accident or somebody broke their leg or whatever the thing is. They're great at that. They're really not at this time. They're really not. ehm, well oriented to chronic conditions because their approach is this reductionist approach and the chronic situation is going to be mind-body spirit, really need to bring an integrated approach and we're we're just at the big, we're just at the baby baby baby part of that. And I happened to just kind of fall in, Dr. Prescott's world, he was only at the Betty Ford Center for three years. You know, I'm telling you, I'm just like
Rich Bennett 20:57
Wow.
Elizabeth 20:58
so lucky, I'm so lucky in so many ways.
Rich Bennett 21:01
All those years, if you deal with the chronic pain, ehm, basically the addiction and everything, how did it affect your work?
Elizabeth 21:08
Oh, I guess this is a good question. So I had, I was a pretty high functioning, uhm, addict in many ways. Like I paid all bills and house, I made sure that I didn't actually, I had, I had to not work, I had stopped work. I was, I was a research scientist and I was going on to study, um, I was a remote sensing specialist and, and I was studying, uhm, uh, that's like how the satellites looked down at the land and I was a plant biologist so I was, I was kind of like this is, this is how we do this work. So I was the plant, I was a plant biologist and also ecosystems and these, these are how these things work together and stuff like that. And, and, and I, that, that career just got like torpedoed with this back thing. I was just like, I guess I'm not moving in that direction. And so I, I really was laid up in the 80s, I was laid up for six years, I literally was in bed for six
and so
Rich Bennett 22:15
years. I got,
Elizabeth 22:16
yeah. So that was, that was, yeah, it was a lot of surgery and a lot of, uh, lay up time and, and a lot of pain and, and, uh, and I, I, I, I had to say, I had a meditation practice from maybe like the mid 70s. So I knew something about the present moment and staying in it, and the value of the now, and I, I didn't really, I, I know had a leverage meditation big time now, but you know, when you're on drugs, like that, when you're on drugs, that kind of creates a veil. I, like, like, I kind of a thick veil. I still was able to leverage the power of meditation to kind of get me from one moment to the next. I just didn't, it just was hard. So, so, so there's a lot of suffering. And also there was, there was a lot of negative mind involved with chronic pain. So it creates a self-esteem issue, it creates a like, I don't even know if I can make it kind of issue. So a lot of, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of that happens. And there's a lot of chaos in the brain. So, uh, I got to the point, this is one of the things that happens in chronic pain, by the way, is the hippocampus that, remember I said we have this emotional regulation problem, where we have a lot of negative mind. Well, we also have a memory issue.
So, that small term, short term memory gets pretty fly. And by the time I was, when I remember this first, so compromised by the time I went to the big, towards center, I remember I could watch a movie at night and I had enough memory capacity at that point to hold the plot of the movie over two hours. But the next morning, like, later I could watch that movie again and it could be brand new. So my memory,
Rich Bennett 24:30
not remember seeing
Elizabeth 24:31
my memory was really, really compel. And what's amazing is I rebuilt that I haven't, you know, I got back to it like a completely normal memory. I've got a memory that's like, I can't believe the stuff I remember. It's kind of like that. So we can heal from this stuff. We just have to, you know, we just have to do what we need to do
Wendy Beck 24:55
can we, can we talk about your recovery process,
Elizabeth 24:58
to heal.
Wendy Beck 24:58
not just,
Elizabeth 24:59
Yeah.
Wendy Beck 25:00
not just the detox, like detox, talk to us about, you know, let's encourage those that are struggling or have a loved one that's struggling, like the path that you took and that has left you the
Elizabeth 25:14
So
Wendy Beck 25:15
sustainable recovery that you have today.
Elizabeth 25:18
Yeah. So I had, thank you for such a great question. So I had, I had so many people hold me and guide me. It's just been quite remarkable. And one of the things that I had coming straight out of, actually going into, but straight out of treatment was something called recovery 2.0 with Tommy Rosen. At that time, Tommy was just getting started. At that time, he had his first online conference while I was in treatment. That September, September, September, October of 2013. But he had a DVD at the time, that had a Kundalini Yoga Spinal Energy Series, Kriya, just a series of movements, that I started with as soon as I, like, as I said, my, kind, my pain went away. So I was able to actually use my body. And I used to be an athlete. So this was like amazing. And I started with Kundalini Yoga, which Spinal Flexing, are you kidding? I could barely breathe before I went into treatment. Now, I'm not only breathing fully, but I'm flexing my spine, and it doesn't know how it's just like amazing. Anyway, so I went into this Yoga practice, and what I, I, it's kind of vigorous, and I had to be very conscious of, of kind of not, having it feed into my chronic stress pattern. Because when I came into,
Rich Bennett 26:57
uh,
Elizabeth 26:57
I got clear of the medication. I cleared that out of my system, but I still had to fall out of it in my system. And I still had the chronic stress pattern that I started with, that I had as a kid. I still had that chronic stress pattern running in my system. And so that was what I was working on in my recovery, was like, can I please just freaking unwind and just take a breath? And can I just chill out a little? It's like just pull the pedal up a little, you know? So, so my recovery has been, um, has been to really unwind the tension pattern. And to unwind the negative thinking pattern that went with it. So, uh,
Wendy Beck 27:51
Right.
Elizabeth 27:52
my, my, uh, uh, and then the way I have done that is I've, I've gone, I went right into 12 step, uh, here in narcotics anonymous, and, uh, which was just amazing. I went into a 12, got a sponsor went into the 12 step process. And then I, uh, and along with that, I, I went into, I had this, I went into yoga and, and, uh, Tommy's sense, um, kind of his vision has grown and, and now recovery 2.0 is its own platform and we have meetings there and I lead meetings. I just will take meetings there. And, um, and I'm a recovery 2.0 coach. So I, I went on to coach training, but the thing is, I never would have done any of that coach training thing until I felt stable in my own recovery. And how did I find stability in own, own recovery? I sat in recovery rooms in the rooms of narcotics anonymous sometimes in, um, sometimes in alcoholics anonymous and listened. And I listened very carefully. And sometimes I'm just like, how does that even work? I was so confused by
Rich Bennett 29:11
Yeah.
Elizabeth 29:11
some stuff and other stuff. It was just like, Oh my god, I'm never going to forget what he just said. And so I listened and I also learned early to take what resonates and leave the rest. So if I'm hearing stuff and it's not landing or I'm like, I don't even know what that is or that doesn't make sense. Don't bother with that. Stay with what's working, right? Stay with what's working and work your program. Another thing was like, I learned to work, the program that works for me and not worry about what other.
I could listen to them
Rich Bennett 29:52
Right.
Elizabeth 29:52
in the eyes for what work for them and see if it fit. You know, some narcotics anonymous has been amazing. Just 12 steps. The 12 steps themselves have been amazing. And then, a recovery shooting program is amazing. And then the other element has been
Well, that yoga piece, that's what Tommy does. He brings in yoga, and there's chanting, and breath work, and like we're doing all eight limbs of yoga, uh, a full on. Right? And I also.
Presented this as a thing, and I was just like, what is this? And what I noticed was it's a very interesting practice because it's a prayer practice. But at the time I had only heard research about the power prayer. I really didn't understand the power. I didn't, I had never embodied the power prayer.
Rich Bennett 31:06
Right.
Elizabeth 31:06
And this is a prayer practice, and, and I experienced the power of it while I was in treatment, and I was just like, oh my God, what is happening here? You could feel I felt the pain in my own body shift, and I, I feel the whole room was shifting, everybody is reporting this reduction and pain. I'm like, oh my God. What's happening here? You know, can you measure this? Is it repeatable? And he does, he teach it. I went right into research mode with this thing. And I took the first training ancestral clearing practitioner training that I could out of as soon as I got out of treatment. Now that was in May of 2014. I took that training and I've been an ancestral clearing practitioner ever since I did that before I learned to recovery coaching. So just saying like, you know, what order it was in that I dropped right into ancestral clearing in the prayer practice as part of my dad was an agent to my 12 step in my in my yoga. And those things were the things that got me so grounded. I thought, gee, you know what? I think I could probably be a recovery coach. I think I'm stable enough to be able to be a guide for other people now.
Wendy Beck 32:17
Well, I think I think that what you're saying is what we're noticing and your recovery path. You know, you've been how long have you been in recovery.
Elizabeth 32:27
2013. Yeah. So that's almost 12 years.
Wendy Beck 32:32
Yes. And in that time we've evolved so much and that your that you're talking about, you know, outside of just abstinence and, you know, the 12 step program. We're finding these other wellness dimensions of wellness. That's to a different level. Like you said, the yoga and the meditation and the prayer and the energy work. And I think that we're just, you know, we're learning how to heal ourselves in different ways that we've ever been able to, you know, track. I
Rich Bennett 33:07
Yeah.
Elizabeth 33:08
Oh, it's so exciting because my parents both died, at least approximately from alcoholism. And we know what I look back on their lives and their trajectory. You know what? They didn't have the tools They didn't, if they didn't, they didn't know
Rich Bennett 33:26
now.
Elizabeth 33:26
about alcohol synonymous at the time and they never thought it was a problem. Like they just didn't, they just didn't have the the consciousness. We just, we are just,
Rich Bennett 33:37
hmm.
Elizabeth 33:38
Seriously, standing on the shoulders of giants like 100%
were just so were just so fortunate to have the tools.
Rich Bennett 33:48
Well, one of the things I've noticed talking to a lot of people recovery. And that's we, because when you said Tommy Rose and it's the name. rung a bell. And of course, you know, after listening to you now, I know why, but I hear a lot of people recovery talking about yoga and meditating and how that helps with them. and, of course, the power of prayer, but it is. It's just amazing. Um, doing yoga and the meditating just makes you feel so much better. Not just people in recovery, but even for mental health, as well.
Elizabeth 34:28
100% yeah, it's, it's interesting to me. Remember, you know, serious stress pattern here, very heavily negative mind. And I still, I've been going and practicing in the morning and doing this yoga practice, the one kind of yoga practice or another, but kind of a very specific, fairly specific, specific focus. And I will wake up in the morning. Not so bad as I used to, but I still wake up with this heaviness. I used to be like the vultures were right there waiting for me.
Rich Bennett 35:03
Yeah.
Elizabeth 35:04
Right. And I, man. And I would, this is so amazing. I would get on my mat. And I would do. Three minutes of this chanting we call long echon cars. Which is really it's your chanting for, uh, it's a two and a half breath chants and your, you're, you're really, you know, your cleaning out, you're doing some serious breath work. And in 3 minutes,
Rich Bennett 35:29
Right.
Elizabeth 35:29
the vultures are like there were vultures.
pattern and I'm going, what the heck is going on here? This is, you know, what is this? And so I..
Rich Bennett 35:51
Uh-huh.
Elizabeth 35:52
Considered that from like my sciency point of view. And I thought to myself, okay, this is what's happening. This is an aspect of the Jol kinds of things happening. But this is an aspect of what's happening. We shallow breathe all night. And most of the LVLI that are exchanging the gases, are at the base of the lung. So we're, we're building up overnight, because we're shallow breathing when I get into the base, building up
Rich Bennett 36:26
we're
Elizabeth 36:26
toxins in the base of the lung and the cells aren't getting oxygenated. And remember, mind, body spirit, the mind reflects the body. And so, and the emotions are reflecting all it is well. And so I'm waking up and I'm like, oh my god, it's dark in this world, you know. And it's because I've got toxins going on. There's no oxygen. And I sit down and clean the pipes, and I get the system going with it. Long deep breath for three minutes. And we're off to the races. Like it's the difference between midnight and dawn. So that's an aspect in it. I mean, there's more going on But that's a kind of a, it's really an ad for long deep breathing is what it is. We just add chance.
Rich Bennett 37:17
Yeah,
Elizabeth 37:17
the words, the new one, and cars, or the words that we do, the vibrational frequency of those sounds are quite remarkable. So that's a whole other thing that I won't take everybody. I just wanted to talk about the breath part.
Rich Bennett 37:32
The breathing people don't understand breathing exercise can make a big
Elizabeth 37:40
difference. I don't understand.
Rich Bennett 37:41
When I started doing you. Yeah, when I started doing yoga, you know, that's one of the first things he talks about is the breathing exercise.
Elizabeth 37:50
Of
Rich Bennett 37:51
course, now I'm doing I do that every day. I don't do the yoga every day anymore, but I need to get back to doing it every day. So now with your coaching and everything, do you do it virtual, or are you strictly in person?
Elizabeth 38:05
I've done both. But I mostly do
Rich Bennett 38:08
mostly
Elizabeth 38:10
do.
Rich Bennett 38:11
Okay, so yeah, mostly do virtual mostly do what?
Elizabeth 38:12
Mostly do virtual
Rich Bennett 38:13
virtual. Okay. So anybody in the world can contact you.
Elizabeth 38:17
Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Rich Bennett 38:21
Okay, all right, well, they're still the very important tell people how they can contact you.
Elizabeth 38:27
Oh, you can find me
Rich Bennett 38:28
your website.
Elizabeth 38:29
You can find me in my website, which is Elizabeth. You got to put a dash in between my first and last name. So Elizabeth dash kip.com. And, you know, you could you could book a free introductory session there. I do ancestral clearing, I do recovery coaching and I do stress management. And that I call myself really a stress management and historical trauma specialists
really people in recovery at this point being, you know, fully alive. And so
Rich Bennett 39:06
I
Elizabeth 39:08
really see when I walk in in the rooms, I can kind of feel people and I mostly see the ancestral burden that they're I mostly I mostly kind of
Rich Bennett 39:20
carrying.
Elizabeth 39:21
kind of sense that and I can also sense like a stress pattern. And you know what else is interesting. And this is not a testament. This is about me. This is about the practice. I will be sitting in a in a in a in a in a local, you know, narcotics anonymous room.
And somebody who's who's just come in from methodiction, walks in the room and then look around and they come and sit right beside me
and they turn literally, this happened three times. And they turned to me and they say, I'm sitting next to you because you're the piece on
Rich Bennett 40:04
Wow.
Elizabeth 40:06
I know.
Yeah.
Rich Bennett 40:10
You know, that's also called Elizabeth. It's the power, the law of attraction, the positivity that you're putting out. You're, you're just bringing them right to you.
Elizabeth 40:24
Well, it could be,
Rich Bennett 40:26
I believe
Elizabeth 40:27
that they're there. They're what what I love about that also is that as as dysregulated and and challenged as a as a as a methodic is coming in. They recognize that energy right away. That's huge. That's huge.
Rich Bennett 40:50
Yeah.
Elizabeth 40:51
Right. So when we go to meetings, I mean sometimes I need a meeting and sometimes I go to the meeting just to be just to be a witness, just to be of service, just to sit in a chair, just to claim the space. I don't have to say a word.
Rich Bennett 41:11
Yeah.
Elizabeth 41:12
That's a service in itself.
Wendy Beck 41:15
So you are you've been in the recovery community for 23 years.
Elizabeth 41:20
No. That's not true.
Wendy Beck 41:23
Sponsored.
Elizabeth 41:24
Not 23 years. No, not 20.
Wendy Beck 41:26
No.
Elizabeth 41:26
I've been, I've been in, I've been in for 12.
Wendy Beck 41:32
Oh,
Elizabeth 41:33
since since 23
Rich Bennett 41:34
recovery. You're right
Wendy Beck 41:37
in recovery. And you sponsor and you sponsor people.
Elizabeth 41:41
Sure.
Wendy Beck 41:43
Yeah. So what advice would you have to someone a new in recovery when it's appropriate for them to or not appropriate. But when, when do you feel like they're ready to sponsor people on their own, on their own.
Rich Bennett 41:59
Oh, wow.
Elizabeth 41:59
Oh, that's a great question. And
Rich Bennett 42:02
it's a good question.
Elizabeth 42:03
I think my son would have, he was just in here with my son that had to say, I remember when I, because he was in recovery before I was, I remember when I was in the rooms before I had worked all
Wendy Beck 42:18
that
Elizabeth 42:19
with a sponsor, I'd worked him at the Betty Ford Center, but kind of quickly, but with a sponsor. At some point, somebody came up to me, I maybe, I was on maybe step three with a sponsor and somebody came up to me and said, Would you be my sponsor? I'm like, I don't know about that. And I said something to my son. And he said, Well, you're, you're three steps ahead of what they are. And which was, you know, which was an interesting point. However, yeah, right. So that, I mean, you know, that's beautiful encouragement, right? Beautiful encouragement. And for me, I feel like let's work through the 12 steps, get our own kind of, have our own spiritual awakening, understand what the steps are. And then once we've worked the 12 steps, then we can take somebody. Yeah. That's
Rich Bennett 43:04
right.
Elizabeth 43:05
That's the way I would do.
Wendy Beck 43:07
Okay. Yeah. Thank you. We're just always like to have different perspectives on that type of thing. You know, we have our sober living houses and we have women in recovery. And I know sometimes we have alumni that have come, you know, that we stay in touch with and they become sponsors of the newer women in the houses. And I was just curious to what your perspective was on when the alumni would be, you know, qualified or ready to just be have sponsors. So that's, that's a, that's a good thing to take away from it. Understanding the steps and have worked in them yourself. Kacha, thank you.
Elizabeth 43:46
Sure.
Rich Bennett 43:47
So Elizabeth, I always love to ask people this, especially somebody that's in your field. Can you, with the recovery coach and everything, is can you share a feel good story about somebody that you have helped that is in recovery themselves? Of course, you don't the
Elizabeth 44:06
name.
Rich Bennett 44:06
mentioning
Elizabeth 44:08
Sure. Sure. Yeah. I'd love the question.
I had got a call from someone who
had worked the steps and had been in recovery for some time. And then one of the things about yoga practice is that it will bring your stuff up. And a fortunate label, the yoga itself is this beautiful container so that as your as your shadow comes up, you have the capacity to, you know, let it process. So it's it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful experience. Anyway, she had this shadow that came up. And it was a little bit of a ghost that was kind of haunting her after the practice and so she called me. And, and so we we ran a step four, five right right away. And this was something that this person had never shared on the fifth step as many times as she's been to never share it on the fourth step. So much shame around it. And so you know the way to shame. Shame. I heard Tommy say this one Tommy Rosen say this one time and I never forgot it because it's so true. Shame is a food of addiction. We need to shine a light on it wherever it is. And so this was a profound space to just kind of attune to her what was happening with her and just be a witness to her, you know, sharing her story around this thing. And, and then being able to mirror back, you know, the, the, the compassion and the uh,
the, uh, pointing, pointing her to the,
the surrender and the forgiveness and that whole energy. And of course, I dropped in some instance and I stopped clearing clear right in the middle of all that, because some of that stuff that's changed she was carrying came from the lineage, right? So we brought in, brought that in as well. And you know, you could see, you could see that, you could hear in her voice, you could, you could see the shift in the energy. And, you know, she felt lighter and she walked away from there, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a- a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a healed person. And really, all I did was say, yes, and listen, and drop a prayer in, you know, but-
Rich Bennett 47:04
Yeah.
Elizabeth 47:05
She was willing, she brought her willingness. And she knew to reach out. And it just doesn't get any sweeter than
Rich Bennett 47:13
that. No. A Lasabeth is there anything you would like to add?
Elizabeth 47:19
I would. My, my, my real, the thing that I'm the most sensitive to, and in terms of stability in my recovery is where are the weak points, where are the relapse spots. So I'm always I'm very sensitive to like other people's stories around that and and I and I, you know, my size mine is incredibly curious about that. So I kind of like a dog with a bone with a with a with with problems like that. That just seemed to be really quite mysterious and I will share with you one thing I have discovered. One of the most important keys to relapse prevention in my opinion
Rich Bennett 48:09
Okay.
Elizabeth 48:09
and my little bit of experience that I have in my own recovery is let's stay in integrity with ourselves. As soon as I slip out of integrity now I've taken a step towards relapse.
Rich Bennett 48:22
Right. Yeah. Well, Elizabeth, I want to thank you so much. It's definitely been an honor and a privilege to talk to you and thank you for helping those that are in recovery as well.
Elizabeth 48:39
Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate your platform and I'm just really excited about the this offering your your your giving everyone. We need to hear all these different messages there. There are many paths, but they all lead, you know, they all lead to the freedom that we get in recovery.
Rich Bennett 48:58
Yes, well, like I said, I wouldn't be doing if it wasn't for Wendy.
I do give her too much praise. Don't
Wendy Beck 49:09
stop.
helping the organization and we're just try to provide awareness and support to anyone that struggles with drug and or all of use, including the families and, you know, our programs are rooted in sober living houses for women. So it's always really inspiring to hear women who have longevity and we thank you for coming on. And, you know, I, I'm really honored to meet you and I would like to if you don't mind could you give us some more information about your book in case
Elizabeth 49:43
I'm
Wendy Beck 49:44
anybody that was listening would be interested in getting that.
Elizabeth 49:47
Sure, it's it's the way through chronic pain tools to reclaim your healing power. It's really, it's a book for chronic pain sufferers and those who care for them. doctors, nurses, family
Wendy Beck 50:02
Okay,
Elizabeth 50:02
members and friends and it offers proven techniques to clear pain and live a life free from suffering from a former chronic pain sufferer me who searched the world for, for answers and found them. And all and of course, chronic pain is a is a form of addiction. So this is a book for chronic pain suffers and for people that suffer from addiction.
Rich & Wendy 50:28
Wendy, I understand that rage against addiction is doing something very important, a monthly donor program. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely. We are hoping to get our supporters to join us in providing a monthly donation. It can be $5 or it can be more. Whatever you can afford really allows us to help plan and increase our fundraising efforts. Well, why should people become a monthly donor? What are they doing to help? Their monthly contributions let us plan for long-term projects and respond quickly when urgent needs arise. And I'll give you an example. We had the need for a new mattress. And we've also had urgent needs for refrigerators and washing machines and all of that kind of stuff that comes up. So they tend to need to be replaced and our women deserve to have the things that they need. So with the monthly donor program, technically, anybody can do it for any amount. Because rage against addiction always needs something. I've known you for years now. And there's times you've told me, you guys need a furniture, you need clothes. And also, you're not getting the grants that you use to or the contributions that you use to. So this monthly donor program will definitely help a lot. Yes. So somebody becomes a monthly donor. What is there anything that they're getting in return? besides, Besides, of course, helping those that need it. I know you guys have an excellent newsletter. Would they automatically subscribe, right? Yeah. We'll both subscribe you to our newsletter. So you'll know what's going on. You can kind of track our progress. Here, success stories, know the data and how many women we serve each year, and just be a part of something bigger. So with this, I guess they're also going to be because of the newsletter. They're going to be one of the first ones to find out about events coming up, like the memory walk and run. The basket bingo. And any other future events that you're doing, the podcast that you do. Yes. So they're going to be tied in right away. Yes. All right, so how can they become a monthly donor? You can go to our website. And that is rageagainstaddiction. org. And go to our donate button. And on there, you will have the option to become a monthly donor. And you can put in any amount that you want. Your commitment, bigger small, empowers our mission and changes lives every single day. Visit us at rageagainstaddiction. org to become a reoccurring donor and join us in making a lasting impact. Thank you for your compassion, generosity, and belief in a brighter future. Together, we can make a difference. Join us today.
