How to Recover from Lyme and Other Chronic Illnesses Naturally

Hi, and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie, and today I want to welcome my friend and colleague, Dr. Tom Moorcroft. He is America's Lyme recovery expert, and he is the creator and founder of the Samara Method. So he's here today to tell us about what he learned from helping people heal from Lyme that he's now using to help people with all different health issues. Thank you so much for being with us today, Dr. Tom. I'm so glad to see you.

Yeah. Hey, Dr. Donnie. So nice to be here. It's an honor and really looking forward to our conversation.

I mean, you and I have known each other for a number of years, so we get to always get to be connecting and sharing what you're up to. And. And I'm so excited to hear today more about the Samara Method. Tell us more. Like, even just how it started with this focus on helping people with Lyme and how then you realized that it could help with so many other health issues.

Yeah, you know, I. I was kind of, like, getting out of college, and I remember being in college, I was studying landscape ecology and wildlife management, and we would always go do these cool things. And I was like, I love being outside. I want to protect the planet. I wanted to be here for a long time. I want to enjoy it. I want to have a family and let my kids and grandkids enjoy it. But I found all the adults would go do something cool. Then we'd sit in a room, and we'd talk, and we'd be like, well, well, let's go do more cool things and more research. And, like, they weren't really taking action. So I thought to myself, who would actually take action? I was like, well, if you get a kid excited about something, they always will take action, and they'll get their parents to take action. So I took an AmeriCorps internship at a place that's now called the Cary Institute, formerly the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Milbrook, New York. They had. The guy who started it had discovered acid rain and everything, so it was, like, a big deal for us. Um, and I. I took a job teaching kids about, you know, mother Nature and doing sugar. You know, maple sugaring and, like, going out in the woods and learning all this. And then, like, one day, I remember my boss came up to me. She starts shaking me. She's like, tom, what the hell is wrong with you? And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, I asked you to work on this project. You've been sitting here for an hour and you've done nothing. I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, look at your screen. The cursor's still blinking at the exact same spot it was when I left. And. And you haven't moved. And then she's like, what's on your shirt? And I looked down, and I'd actually been drooling all over myself. And then kind of in retrospect, I had developed sort of this, what? You know, brain fog and joint pain and muscle aches. And then, like, she's like, you gotta go see the doctor. And it was like, crazy. It was like, I woke up the next day and I had this rash that covered like, a fifth of my body as I'm going over to the doctor, and I was like, what the hell is going on? And he's like, hey, you know, within like, 30 seconds, he's like, classic Lyme disease. Here's your doxycycline. Take 10 days and you'll be good to go. And so for the first few days, I laid on the floor, alternating sweats and chills. My parents were like. Literally, I was in my early 20s. They were carrying me to the bathroom. So it's, like, so embarrassing. But after about a week and a half, I actually felt better, Donnie. And it was like. But, you know, what happened was, over the next couple of years, the brain fog and the fatigue crept back in, joint pain and all that. And I go to the doctor and I ask him because I hadn't, like, you know, figured out, you know, natural medicine, osteopathic medicine yet. I was just trying to go through the day, and I'm like, I'm getting sicker and sicker. I go to doctor after doctor. They have nothing to offer me. And eventually, I'm getting really irritated at them. And then the guy goes, oh, you have depression just like your dad. It runs in families. Don't worry about it. I'm like, no, I'm mad because I don't feel good and you're not helping me. So. But I followed the rules. I did all the drugs, and they didn't work. So they're like, oh, yeah, bipolar type 2. Like all the good doctors and lawyers do. I'm like, tried the meds, side effects, didn't work. And then I finally went to my primary again. I said, look, dude, I am dying. It's been like six years. Joint pain, brain fog and fatigue. He said, I know you have fibromyalgia syndrome.

Oh, my gosh. Then I give it another Name?

Yeah. And so in the end of this thing, Donnie, I was like ready to punch him because he basically took the words I gave him, put a label on it. And the problem with that label was it didn't tell me the cause. So it didn't give me any hope to get better. And at that point, my back was against the wall and it was really interesting. I was standing in my apartment and I had just been started in medical school, and I was staring at the wall yet again. And I go, if I keep doing what they say, which I've done for the last six years, I know exactly what that path is going to get me. I was like, but I just had gotten married. I mean, you know, Jill, we've been together for like 20 some years, four years now. I mean, it's amazing, but I want to have a life with her. I want to have a family. I want dogs. I'm going to go hike and ski and mountain bike in the woods and the mountains, but I can't do that. But I want to. So I'm like, well, if I double down on this crap, I'm going to get more of that. I'm like, I'm just going to try that. And as soon as I focused on what I really wanted and gave myself a half a chance to get better, everything changed. People handed me yoga DVDs and I started this whole pathway, started to learn about diet and nutrition. And over the next two years, I got a lot better. And then I met the doctors that I needed to get over the last 30%. And it took me another four years to get better. But right now I've been 12 plus years without a symptom of Lyme or babesiosis, which it turns out I had that too. But what was really interesting was a lot of us talk about the mind over matter placebo part. About a third of all medical outcomes are that I find it's more like 3/4 or more.

Wow.

I really learned about that. And that's really where I came to embrace kind of like a comprehensive body, mind, spirit approach. I think we need medicine, I think we need herbs and supplements, but so much of it is stuff we can control. And that's really where what led me to following, going down this path so I could help others in this who are suffering like I was. And really led me to realize, you know, to kind of formulate the Samara method. So pretty. It was long journey, but we're here and feeling great and helping other people now.

So amazing. I mean, and I can Completely relate to that. Like when people. Because I had migraines for many years and people say to me, what did you finally do that solved the migraines? And I did many things. Like you're saying, you know, you do many things when you're trying to heal from Lyme and Babesia. It was. But when I come back to it, I say there was something about this shifted in my mind, mindset in my. My commitment to healing, my belief that healing was possible, and my willingness to then go seek help and talk about it. And there's a shift that happens, right, like, like you're saying, I think that's your point, is that it's. When you said you decided, hey, I'm gonna heal, I'm gonna find a way.

Mm. Well, and. And it was like every doctor asked me to take a pill and give my power of self healing over.

Prescription pills. And if it had worked, I probably wouldn't be talking to you. But as so many of the people you and I see and work with, and probably so many people listening, you've tried some pills and they've helped, but you've tried other ones that may not have where you know someone who's been harmed by them. And you know, it's not to say they don't have their place, but I tried every single thing the doctor said and none of it worked. And I'm like, what I found was if I had started with where I ended, I could get people better, quicker. And my goal is to really. I was very fortunate to learn about the osteopathic profession. And then essentially in the mid-1800s, the frontier, Maryland, Andrew Taylor still was like, hey, we're giving arsenic and strychnine and that's hurting people. Let's stop doing that.

Good idea.

And oh, by the way, hands on manipulation works. And back then it was like, if you were a surgeon and you touched someone, you were a second rate citizen. It wasn't like now. So they laughed at him and mocked him. So he had to create a new profession. And he was talking about the integration, the unity of body, mind and spirit as one totality back in the mid-1800s, before it was really invoked. And he also came up with this other crazy ass idea, which is your body has the ability to heal itself. And you're like, well, I know that if I cut myself, you know, 99.99% of the time it's going to heal on its own. How does that happen? That's so much smarter than my conscious brain that tells me I need to take a pill. So why don't I harness that power and look at myself as a catalyst for self healing, a supporter of self healing rather than the doer of the healing. And I don't think I've ever really asked the physician and they said, yeah, I do the healing. Well, some of the surgeons think they do, but most docs are given a pill, they're like, no, no, no. That's just supporting your body until your immune system can come back online. But then they just leave you on it, or they do it too short or too long. And it's like you're not following through because you don't have a philosophy to believe in. And I just saw that, like so many of us are tortured by this. Like, you gotta look outside of yourself for healing. I think you do that sometimes. But start with what you can do.

I completely agree. And I see this with cases of hpv, high risk HPV as well. You know, when I, it's tempting to think, oh, we're just, just like with Lyme, people so much are like, okay, I'm going to just take an antibiotic for Lyme or even with hpv, there's no antibiotic. But we, we even just think, let me use vitamin C and mushroom extracts. And we're going directly at the target, which to some degree is useful. But if we don't dig underneath and say to ourselves, what's really going on here? Why is this infection present?

Right?

Is that, that's what you're saying is we have to see why is our body not healing the infection?

Yeah. You know, it's so interesting, like during COVID I very quickly said, become the world's worst viral host. Like if a tick is coming by you and they've got Lyme disease, which is the bacterial infection or Babesia, it's a parasitic infection. Become the worst bacterial, parasitic, fungal, viral host possible. Just radiate. It's like, it's really interesting because I grew up getting bit by ticks all the time. And it's the only time that I know I got bit by a tick but didn't see it was when I got Lyme that time with the Babesia. So. But a lot of people don't see it. But what happened was as I went through my healing journey, despite not changing my outdoor activities, after I got better, I actually went back to doing probably more than I had done in a very long time. I wasn't getting bitten by ticks. It was almost as if, and we know there's like pheromones and stuff that they have some attraction to. But it's like. It's almost like they knew that I wasn't a good place to waste their energy. And I think it's. You vibrate at that level of health and vitality and shining your passion and love. And I always tell people, like, hey, like, I want you to find out what your passion is and focus on it and then shine your light for the planet, because it's a little dark right now, even though the sun's shining right at the moment. I mean, the. The earth could use some more positive examples, in my opinion. And. And I'm like, who's better to do? It's almost like Gandhi, when you paraphrase Gandhi, had that saying. It's like, be the change that you want to see in the world, right? And it's like, start with you and then be an example. Be an example for your partner, your friends, your children, all those around you. And it's like, how do I get my kids to behave better? I mean, we have kids. We both have kids, right? It's like, how do you get them to behave? You model the behavior. Well, just, if you want to be healthy, model the behavior for yourself and as well as those around you.

I love it. And how does this help us understand the Samara method? Tell us more about this. This method that you've developed and, And I'm sure integrating in these concepts.

Yeah. You know, Donnie, I think one of the things that I've noticed is like, so many people talk about, like, fight, flight and freeze and that freeze state, being stuck in sort of that victim mentality. And what I look at with people with Lyme and other infections is we actually have SPECT scan studies that show that your Lyme and other infections can change the metabolism and the function in your brain. And one of the sayings we have is like, you can't heal unless you feel safe, Right?

Yes.

I think a lot of people understand that. But then your cognitive brain, your higher brains, like, of course I'm safe. Of course I want to get better. But your reptilian brain, that sort of the reflex protective part of you, if you, if you're not safe, it's like your comfort zone becomes safety. And comfort doesn't mean better, it just means alive. So you can feel like dirt, but your nervous system views that as comfort. So I said, well, a lot of people get upset if you talk about a victim mentality because it really isn't all in their head. And so then when I. When I Dove into this. And there's all this work on trauma and limbic and vagus nerve and all this. But I'm like, is there anything more? And you can actually see these infections changing the way the brain functions so that you have a decreased ability to be able to understand the cues of safety. So you can be safe, but because of the Lyme, say you won't understand. So examples are gestures, facial expression, and vocal intonation, right? And so you'll see a lot of people like us, we're excited, we're going go because we've worked through that. But when you see somebody is sick, they kind of are withdrawn and they talk. And so many people like you tell your kid who doesn't feel well, well, make eye contact, make eye contact. But that's part of their physiology and they can't if they're ill. So I said, well, we could treat the infections. And the problem is those things stick around. And I'm like, well, why? And it's almost like our phone, right? And it's on our phone. If our operating system gets messed up or it gets all fragmented, we often need to get an, you know, download, you know, an update and then reboot it. So I'm like, well, how can we help reboot the brain while still infected with Lyme or done with Lyme? Because it doesn't really matter in my clinical experience over the last 15 years. And we started to map it out and I said, well, if I come, I can come together and I can help people shift from that victim mentality to really feeling empowered. But we can also help them cultivate self compassion and acceptance. Because along the way, you know, it's going to take a while sometimes, like, and you really have to sort of like, be patient and also like, really trust the process, trust the people you're working with. But more importantly, learn to retrust your body because it knows how to heal. But your healing journey may be different than anybody else's. And then ultimately it's about connecting with your inner purpose and your inner passion. Because so it's so interesting. And I use a lot of hypnosis, like hypnotic meditation approaches. Because I'm like, how do we just re. How do we do it? Like, it's a phone, how do we just download it? And it's like, let's reprogram what people want to think about. Because so many people are like.

And people listening can do this for the rest of today. Just notice and maybe even write down all the things you say about yourself. On average, it's 90 to 95% negative. And about 100% of it's repetitive. And probably all you have to do is listen to yourself for 15 or 20 minutes and you'll be done and just go, hey, is it a positive meditation? Am I focusing on what I really want or is it more of it negative? And if you look at social media, look at the tv, we were talking before we started. I love talking about diet. Everybody's like, what do I put in my mouth? I'm like, yes, what do you put in your mouth? But what do you put in your heart and your mind as well? So we have all this negativity. You look at the news that I got a couple seconds of like, oh, some puppy, you know, saved a kid from drowning or something at the end, but Otherwise it was 59 minutes of horribleness.

Yeah.

And that's an evolutionary thing. So if we can help you. And it's not like isolating out only the trauma response or isolating out only my plan for the future or only my physical healing. It's about a way to put it together from someone who's actually been there, done that, and gotten better. And really, I think the focus becomes, can we get you to more easily? One focus on what you really want in life, because you're never going to forget if you're not feeling well, that's pretty hard to do. So really focus on what your dreams and passions are, but then to really get down there and go, how can we change the way you think more easily? And how can we do it in a community where we all can get together? Because we're going through the same thing, but we're reminding each other to do exactly what that behind you says is let that stress melt away and reset your health, body, mind and spirit. Rather than just going like, this is my trauma course, this is my planning the rest of my life and my.

How separate.

Yeah, yeah, let's bring it all back together. Because that's how our body works.

No, it's such as. I completely agree.

And this is so beautiful. It's like this journey of self discovery, you know, and going back to the roots of who you are. And it's like so many people, like, I feel numb, I feel dissociated, I'm not connected anymore. And I'm like, how do we reconnect? Well, the first way to reconnect, I mean, a lot of the, the healing methodologies that have been shown to work get you to include things like joyfulness and gratitude practices and connecting with others. But One of the starting points is some people don't feel comfortable enough to do that, so they're like, sing in the shower and do this and that. I'm like, oh, so you mean before I reconnect with others, I should reconnect with myself? And there are modalities to do that, to make it simpler. And you know me, I'm like this super duper quick start. I like to be done. I'm fast. If, If, If I could do it in a year, I could do it in a month. I'll try to do it in a day. So let's just like, let's really get the action, you know, and get the. Get. Get that momentum building.

I love it. And I. And I. I love that I cover so much of this in the book you see over My shoulder, the Master stress reset your health book, because there's so much research on this. This is what I go through is in the book, right? It's not just that we're coming up with these concepts because sometimes they sound kind of fluffy or too good to be true. People think, how could it be so simple as just connecting with my purpose and, you know, doing things I enjoy? And yet that's what the research shows helps us as humans to heal, you know, is to. Like, you're saying, how do we reconnect with ourselves because we are so separate from ourselves. You know, we. I think we're unfortunately conditioned that way. From early childhood. Through parenting and education and different things we're exposed to. We. We trust less our own intuition and our own selves, and we end up thinking that something outside of us is going to give us the answers. And that's where we get stuck in this model of searching for that one pill that's going to solve everything versus saying, hey, let me connect with myself, listen to my body. And, And. And I love that you're teaching us, like, noticing or awareness. How can we be more aware of those critical thoughts? Because once you become aware of it now, that's the first step to being able to change it. So I'm completely with you, Tom. And I see this making such a big difference in my patients and in the programs that I teach. You know, just being able to have that awareness, reconnect with ourselves so that we can actually shift out of that stress mode. Because you're right, the thing is, if we're constantly in stress mode, that's what I tend to call it. It's actually this. I was just looking at some research where it actually shifts the receptors in the immune system that make us more susceptible to infections. So it's like we have to actually outsmart it. You know, if we just let that override and keep playing out that stress mode, and it causes women with HPV to be in a high anxiety state, and then it perpetuates that stress, it actually puts the immune system into a state that makes us more vulnerable. So we. The virus wins or the Lyme wins in that scenario. So we have to actually say, wait a minute, this is. This is. I'm the human, this is my body, this is my life, this is my decision, what I'm going to do. And so I love that you're. You're teaching people that too, like, how to help people to take. Right. Take back charge of your health and say, what do.

How.

What do I really want to experience here in this lifetime?

Well, and it's so interesting, like, and I agree with all those things you're saying, and when we, like when I grew up and. And everybody's like, what the hell's Samara? It's kind of funny because if you know those, like oak and especially the maple leaves, the little seed that's like a upside down V, but then when you break it, it's the helicopter. And yeah, we've peeled it off, put it on our nose when we were kids and we played around, that's a Samara, that seed of health. And when we created our educational company separate from our medical practice, we named it Samara Health. And I'm like, there's something more to that and when's it going to happen? And it really became our acronym for this and like, step three in our processes and that I think you just were kind of really hitting on. Is this mindful progress? There's so many people talk about mindfulness, but I want people to focus on the mindfulness of not just what it is, but what their wins have actually been and where they're going and the progress they've made. Because I've had people come in and I always say, what is your current percent of normal? Like, where did you start? Where are you going? How much room do you still have to go? And somebody came in, and in two months, anybody with chronic Lyme or even chronic HPV probably knows this is insane. And in two months, they were 70% better.

That's fast.

They were super negative. They were like, I'm 70% better, but I have such a long way. And I have this, and I have this and I have this. And I'm like, could you take A moment and be aware that every other person in my practice would die. To be in your shoes right now, 70% improvement in two months in chronic illness is amazing. So we really spent there that mindfulness part. And you know, one of the things that you were just referring to in the Lyme world I talk a lot about because Lyme disease has been shown to really mess up what they call respiratory modulation of the cardiac vagus tone. So fancy. I mean, think a lot of people know the vagus nerve. It goes to the heart and to the gut. It's really that big nerve that really connects our brains to our hearts and our guts, but. And kind of gets a little bit it's function a little hijacked over time with this. But what they found was in Lyme disease patients that they think that either the infection or the downstream effects of the infection either affect the vagus nerve directly or the nerve where the nerve comes out of the brainstem. Which is why a lot of people have dysautonomia. They have heart rate problems, you know, fluctuating or rapid heart rates, a blood pressure issues. They don't feel like they can get a calm, deep breath. And it's like they're always feeling amped up because they can almost physiologically it's hard to de stress because the vagus is what puts that calming tone on your heart. So they're always feeling kind of amped up.

Having optimal cortisol and adrenaline levels is essential for health and longevity. And yet the stress in the present and in the past can affect our cortisol and adrenaline levels, causing them to be too high or too low. The thing is that we're not all affected by stress in the same way. So over the past two decades, I've been researching and discovering how to help my patients recover from stress. And I've identified the five stress types, which are the five common patterns of disruption in cortisol and adrenaline levels.

The reason why this is so important.

Is because the treatment is different when cortisol is too high. We use different herbs, nutrients and other modalities to bring levels back to optimal than if the levels are too low. So that's why I, through research, developed the stress type quiz, which allows you in under two minutes to discover what likely your cortisol and adrenaline levels are. So then you can make decisions about which herbs, nutrients and other healing activities to choose to help optimize your cortisol and adrenaline again and improve your health now and into the future. Just go to stresstypequiz.com where you can take the quiz and take it from there.

So what's really interesting is.

The vagal tone and how all this, the way you can change that is through improving heart rate variability. And if you want to, if anybody wants to grab like their whoop or their aura ring or their Fitbit or their garment or even their heart math and throw it on their ear, they, there's heart math Institute has this amazing quick coherence technique that anybody can do which is just sit on your bed or lay down, start breathing. And if you start breathing and then just feel it moving in and out of the center of your chest, AKA your heart, like so obviously you're not breathing in your heart, but you can feel the breath and its effect around your heart. And then after you do that for a couple of moments, you're already more parasympathetic, which bumps up your heart rate variability. But to really supercharge it, you just think about someone or something that you love, whether it's something you're going to do in the future that you love, something current in your life that's amazing, or even a memory of something that you love that you'll get back to after, but really live it in the moment and that'll shoot your heart rate variability up. And then like you were saying, Donnie, I mean the, the immune system boost you get from just being incoherent is, and increasing your heart rate variability is huge. Increased resilience to stress, increase.

Longevity, increased resistance to these external toxins, including all these infections. Right. And so it's really when you have higher heart rate variability, it's this indicator of improved self regulatory function. So and even people report that they can handle social stressors better, which is another way of saying they can go out in public and feel safe even though they're not thinking about it just because get this crazy one, they're more in touch with themselves. Right. And I mean I know you know this, so I just find it so amazing. And this is just like the simple thing you can do right now. Even as you're listening to Dr. Donnie and I talk, you can do this and really get centered in. And then when you have a community of people that come together, you look at like the work of Joe Dispenza, um, love his work. Again, it's a little. I love going to a retreat once in a while, I love doing his practice once in a while. But it's complicated and for me I love doing a lot of things. And the more things I do that are long and complicated. The less room I have in to do all the crazy things I love doing. Because why do 10 things in a day when you could do 47? I don't. Should also kind of cut it down a little bit, but I'm excited about it. Right. And so. But the work they do is show whether you're in person or just you hold the intention together over zoom. And sometimes he's done things where people. He's connected with them with Zoom, but they're not connected with each other. And you can literally see areas of the planet change, and you can see groups of people changing. And when you do it together with a community, it amplifies it. And then when you feel the amplification, you're used to it. And then on the tail end of that, you go home. And it makes it easier for you to get to the same place in your own practice. So I'm a big fan of having that personal experience, but also the community connection, whether it's virtual or in person. And it can make such a huge difference.

Absolutely. We see this in the. The HPV healing community. Amazing. Because I teach them. I'm also trained in heart math. I teach them biofeedback. I love that you're talking about this. And we see this. It's really profound. And so many women then report back when we say to them, of course, we get to the. Their normal Pap smear and negative hpv, but they talk about the transformation they experience in their health. And when someone says what really made a difference for you? A lot of times what they point out is this experience of learning how to regulate their own nervous system and how to use these techniques, like simply taking a deep breath and thinking of something you feel grateful for as a tool that they can use day in, day out. I love also, Tom, how you talk about, like, we get so used to being in a stressed situ. Stressed mode that is so familiar. Right. That we, We. We don't even. We can't even imagine that something's different. And it's only once you take these small steps in that direction that you start to get your eyes open to, like, wow, there's a whole nother way to exist in this world that's. That's not in a constantly stressed state. State. I don't know if you. Do you mind me asking? Because one of my other interests is in psychedelic assisted therapy. I don't know if I got to tell you that I'm. I'm getting certified in psychedelic assisted therapy, because for me, that's Been a way to really expand my ability to see what things are like out of that stressed mode. I know you have a little experience with that too, if you don't mind sharing.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. Like, two weeks ago, I just. And one of the, like, the premier autism group, which is also named maps, which is kind of funny for pediatric special needs. And then. Then there's the other Maps, who's studying this psychedelic. Actually asked me to talk about psychedelic therapy and its potential uses in autism. And they actually have trials of using MDMA in autistic adults. And it works incredibly well. So this is what I really love about the Samara Method, is a lot of people. Well, if I. If I go backwards, the. The psychedelic part. So even backwards more. I study a lot with Bob Proctor. And if anybody's seen the Secret, Bob's like the old gray guy in. In the Secret, who kind of was laying down, like, the framework of the whole thing. And Bob always talks about, like, how do we program the unconscious mind? Like, so the conscious mind is kind of the thing that controls a lot of it, and it says yes or no. But the unconscious mind, which does 90% of our automated processes, is the autopilot force only can say yes. It only does what you tell it. So how do you reprogram it? There's really two ways. One is a major event, and that major event is most commonly negative. Think like 9, 11, Covid, whatever, something traumatic birth of a child. But it's usually negative, so it's not easy to harness. Or the other one is repetition. And repetition is hard, especially in the face of if you don't see yourself achieving that unstoppable momentum, or any momentum, for that matter. So one of the things that I love about psychedelics is it can be the thing that leads to a positive shift because it allows your conscious mind to be, like, a little bit kind of confused. See things from a different perspective, but allows your unconscious mind, which totally knows how to heal you. Your body is 100 of the time on your side trying to heal you. Your conscious mind might be getting in the way or your actions might be getting away. So then if we have this opportunity to let the unconscious mind and my friend, why can't I think of. Tom McCarthy wrote the breakthrough Code, right? He helped Tony Robbins blow up his company back in the day. Tom does all this work, and I've heard this word a lot of other places, but he uses it all the time. So I want to give him credit. When you dissociate Your conscious mind and your unconscious. The unconscious can plug back in the life, God, the universe, whatever word, source, but it plugs back in the life. And your unconscious really is now open to these unlimited new possibilities of healing coming in your life. And it becomes the super conscious. So the more I can allow my conscious mind to go, you know what, I'm going to let my unconscious mind and become this in its form of the superconscious, be connected with source. Now we're. And then I'm going to take that and I'm going to be more objective and the conscious mind becomes a tool of mine and I find that the perspective to get there. For many people, it's much easier with psychedelics. And then if I go back to like the Samara method, not everyone wants to do that, can do that, or is in a place where they're. They feel like they're going to have access to it right now. And that's changing in our country, which is really great. So I said, what are the other ways can we do that? And if we do these hypno meditation, hypno healing sessions where we ask your conscious mind for permission to talk to your unconscious and the parts and really to look at it in a way that you can have a different perspective with the permission of everyone. Not like I'm trying to slide it in because with psychedelics your conscious mind is going, I never thought of it. Oh, it could be different. Oh, there's a different way that I never thought of. And I'm saying, can we do that in a way where maybe we don't have access to psychedelics, but we're creating the similar conscious, unconscious, superconscious experience. And it's not the same thing, but for some people, literally. I've had people who've been thinking about hiring CEOs to help their health company for the last five years and they are burnt out. I do one session with them, three days later they're like, I don't know what you just did to me, but I've taken action on shit I haven't done in the last five years. And two weeks later, like, that was the best hire I ever made. I have been dreaming of this person. And the reason I didn't move forward on it was I was afraid to get what I didn't want. But I gave them the opportunity to allow their unconscious rather than their conscious to tap into what they really wanted and they got it. And I'm like, there you go.

And you studied also nlp, right? Neuro linguistic Programming. I hear some of that coming through with what you're describing. Maybe mention a little bit of that, too. Like you're taking these different concepts and bringing them together and say, hey, let's use this to allow us to shift our experience, both our mental, emotional and our physical experience. Be able to shift that experience in a profound way.

I totally agree. And I think the thing we NLP came out of, like, Bandler and the other guy, I can't remember his name right now, studying what Mil and Erickson, kind of like the real father of clinical hypnotherapy did, and they found that a lot of our language patterns matter. So, like, if you tell your kids not to do X, Y and Z, like, don't climb on the counter, don't have candy, well, guess what? The brain doesn't processes. And pictures doesn't process. Not so they hear, eat candy. Just like if you think to your dog, don't get on the couch. They get on the couch immediately. Sometimes, yeah, you just think about what you're saying to yourself. And that's why I said earlier, think about what you're saying to yourself all day long. And if you're. If you become mindful of it, then you can make that progress for your. Hey, I'm actually telling myself that I have, like, the thing that kills me in my field. Limey's and moldies. Please stop labeling. And in my story, I was so lucky I didn't know what the label was. Donnie. I was so fortunate to not know because I didn't have any fibromyalgia, sounded so dumb that I couldn't.

You didn't get attached to it. Yeah. You're like, forget that.

But if you're like, I'm a limey, think about, so to do this, everybody do this tomorrow morning. Well, do it tonight before you go to bed, plan it. But when you wake up tomorrow morning, be like, hey, you know what? Bob. Bob Proctor was so incredible at teaching this. He had me get this book about acting from.

This woman. And it's literally, he said, the best way to change your life is to rewrite your script.

Yes.

So if anybody knows Tom Cruise, which I'm sure you do, or Keanu Reeves, you have probably almost no knowledge of who they are as a person. But you know Ethan Hawke, you know Maverick, you know, you know Neo from the Matrix, and you, they become those characters, whether you like them as people or not. You know more about them as that character because they fully embody it. So tomorrow morning when you wake up in the morning, lay down in bed and say, who do I want to be today? Because most of us don't think that we put our feet on the ground and we just start walking as the person we were yesterday. But what if we don't want to be that person forever? So the day where I said, not this I want to go there, I immediately started waking up the next day as the person who was doing that already. And so then people are like, but I can't do that yet. I can't go out and mountain bike and ski because I have Lyme. So then I say, okay, well, guess what? The person who knows how to heal from Lyme 10 years down the road is you now. So take action as the person who knows how to heal, because you can't be healed until you take the action to heal. And so it's. If you don't. If you don't start to think of yourself there. So it's not like, you know, pretending to be that person, but it's like you. You get into who you are and you start taking action as if you knew how to heal already because you can envision yourself. And quantum physics tells us it's everything that's going to happen has already happened. And we're just almost skipping timelines. So it's just like, why don't you just go, hey, I can connect with that person. Let my unconscious do the work. And there. And then there you go.

I love it. Oh, my gosh. I love that you're bringing all these concepts together. It's. To me, it's just so fascinating. And it is. I agree. This is the, this is the, the next level of how humans heal, of being able to learn this and harness this and do this. And it does take practice. It's not something someone learned just from listening to this one interview. You know, it's something that we need to be able to keep hearing over and over, try it out, learn from it, hear it in different ways from different people. And that's why I love, like, what you're creating with the Samara Method, where you're going to be creating these trainings for people and not just in person. Right. It's going to be online and where they can have a, you know, live interactions with people who are also on the same path to. To learning how to implement this.

Yeah. And you know what's so fun too, is you know, you're doing the right thing when you say, I've been meaning to do this and now I'm doing it because I Do it with people in our practice. I do it with people in small groups. I do it with a whole bunch of our colleagues who are burnt and, you know, don't have the benefit. Like, they're. We're in it. So you need a friend and a colleague to lean on, you know, because a lot of times you can't. If you're in the picture, you really can't see what's going on in it, you know, so you need someone, an objective third party. But we get together and we do all this. And the second I decided to take it from just small group work and really give it out to the world. I. All kinds of people reach out and go, I want to do this and that. Can I help you? And I was like, how did you even know I was doing that? Right. This is the power. And so, you know, so I actually, we're going to be doing bioenergetic voice scans from Energy for Life as part of it. And because that way, if we have a little bit of energy flow issues that are physical and we want to help move the energy and revitalize the body, let the trauma wash out of your body more easily than just deeply focus. I have. I one, I do that in my practice, but I can't do everything myself. I have other people going, hey, can I do that for you? I want to do that part in the program. However we can make it happen. And so then people are like, well, how does this, you know, kind of this, like you, you have, you know, it's like you build it and they will come type of thing. It's like, how does that apply to my health? It's the second I decided that I had a better life to live and I was, no matter what, going to achieve it. Even if. And if I didn't get there, I was going to die trying. Because I knew that the other path sucked. And immediately, within 24 hours, someone handed me a yoga DVD. And I was like. And I did it. And one, I could. I could barely touch my kneecaps. And what I noticed is the guy's breathing was weird. And I was like, he's changing it to market it. So I went to the back of the video. I said, where did he learn it? I went back to the Indian tradition of Ashtanga yoga. And a lot of people get hurt doing it. They're all trying to be calisthenic, you know, and flexibility junkies, legs behind the head and all this. And my teacher, I was so fortunate. I studied with one of the first People to study with the guru in India. And he said, yoga is movement on breath, not the other way around. If your breath cannot be full, you shouldn't be in that posture. So the rule was it was 90 days, 90 minutes a day, six days a week. You take the one day a week off in the new and the full moon to respect your body and not get addicted to the practice. And to respect the fact that we have water and gravitational pulls and we're connected with the world and the universe. And I was like, day one, I did about 90 seconds and I was like, I can't do anything else. So I literally sat there and for 88 and a half more minutes was breathing. And I just learned over time just by breathing. And it took me almost six months to be able to do a 90 minute practice, but it opened up that fast from a guy who literally. My fingertips could not touch the middle of my kneecap without bending my knees. That's how much pain I was in, how stiff I was. But the breath guided me. But what it. What did it do? It. How. How do we hear from trauma? So much of the work that we need to do is the somatic work that brings us back in to realize we're safe. The yoga just kind of tricked me. Get into your body. Feel everything moving. The more I would breathe and be in my body, the more my fascia opened up, the more I released toxins, the more the energy flowed, the better I slept. And then all, lo and behold, my body started rejecting processed foods before I even had training to understand that was a problem. I didn't know. And my diet was almost like spick and span, perfect for like Paleo by the time I was done that without even knowing what Paleo was, you know, and it's just so crazy, Donnie, that when you listen to your body, just through coming back home and really sitting in your body, all of this stuff can change. And when you say yes to yourself, all the things that you need will come into your life to help you. And the challenge. I remember Bob Proctor, you know, and he died. So it, you know, two of my three main mentors in my life died last year. They were old, which is okay, but, you know, Bob was almost 90. And my other mentor, Charles Ray Jones and Lyme, pediatric lyme, died at 93. And they stayed alive so long because they're so passionate. But Bob was talking about, you know, the thing you have to know about the universe is it will deliver, but it might not deliver until the microsecond before you need it. So you have to have the ultimate faith in the process. And when I have that faith and really go for it, it makes such a difference. And the thing I love to say to everybody is you. So you are so worthy, you deserve healing. And whatever might not be going the way you want, I'm not saying you deserve that in your life, but it's come into your life to be a teacher, to allow you an opportunity in your own unique way to reconnect with yourself and maybe even inspire many, many people around you. And so you never know what it's going to bring. But if you go on that healing journey that's uniquely yours, you so deserve it, and you're so worthy. And also, like Donnie, one of the things. I don't know how you do this in your practice, but a lot of my people want to be cured. But I've met a lot of cured people who are absolutely miserable. And my goal is to help people heal, which to me is to become whole. Reconnect with yourself. Allow yourself to inner, you know, to radiate your inner light, reconnect with your passion, reconnect with your family, your community, so that you feel full and complete and even. And most people will be cured during that process, but even if they're not, it doesn't matter, because they feel so much better. And whether they live or die from whatever illness they have, they're just this radiant light being reconnected to everything. They feel amazing. Whereas other people are like, hey, I got rid of my disease, but they never change and they're miserable. So I'd much rather be the healed person, personally.

Absolutely. I agree. And I. And I think this comes back to what you were saying in terms of, you know, living our purpose. Like, even. I think sometimes it's like I'm, you know, we might even say listeners, you know, do you feel like you. You know what your purpose is, or you connect with a purpose? And the way you're describing, too, is that your healing journey can be your purpose, you know, like, you're. But we learn. I find this for myself that. That when I started looking at my. My process as a human in this body, right, Is the. The process of learning my body and. And learning to give it what it needs. That process is the human experience. That is part of my purpose here is. Is to. To learn along the way and then share it with others. And. And I think that's, you know, likely you might be saying something similar just based on what you're doing, what you do each day. Right. It's like we get to live our purpose of learning and sharing and helping others.

Yeah. It's so true. And I mean, I can say I lost 13 years of my life to this disease, but it, it doesn't feel that way. I've, I, I, I don't think I'd be even remotely at the place I am and wouldn't be able to help as much as I can. I wouldn't have the viewpoint now. I feel like I've always been open to these kind of things, and maybe that's where I was choosing. But I always wonder, why did I go down the line path? And like, the other parts of the story was I was better, and I wasn't gonna do this. I was just gonna do osteopathic manipulation and, like, teach meditation for the rest of my life. And it was like, then I put my hands on somebody. I was like, you're infected. And I was like, I don't know anybody to refer you to. So. And then I treated one person, the next person, the second person, I got out of a wheelchair in a couple of months, and you were off to the races. But I'm like, why am I doing this? Like, and lion's not the most fun or sexy thing, but people are suffering. And then I'm like, wait. I learned so much about what it means to be alive. I know so much, learn so much about what true health means and what the healing journey can really be about and what our life journey can be. And now, like, not only do I have a platform where people know I understand the Lyme and the mold and the, you know, the kids with pans, pandas and stuff like that, but we can connect to so many other people because it's not just about Lyme or mold. This is the human condition. We're all experiencing some sort of chronic stress, some kind of chronic toxin overload. You know, whether it be a disease process or work or just the mindset like you said, I mean, all of us are programmed by our environment and our parents around us before we're born. But before we're seven, right? Seven, eight years old. That's not your choice. But now you do have a choice. And that's where the Samara method comes in, is we do things where we can help you more easily reprogram it. Because before seven, it's easy to reprogram yourself or, you know, but now that if you're above 7, we can't reprogram you right now so easily. But there are met or at least you can't yourself, but there's methodologies that can teach you those tools, so it doesn't have to be like, oh, I have to practice this for three or four years before I get that momentum going. So, you know, and. And the other part, too, is, like, I tell people, Donnie, so much like it. There is a part of accepting where you're at with compassion, you know, and grace, and. And if the only thing you're doing is learning what compassion and grace mean, that's enough. But, you know, accept where you are without judgment and then look for where you want to be, you know, and be so thankful for that so that you can get going. But, yeah, I mean, I think right along the same lines.

Yeah, it's. It's awesome. And to. To know that you are sharing this out with everyone. So I'll make sure to put down below where people can contact you to learn more about the Samara method and everything else that you do. Certainly, if anyone's struggling with Lyme or anything, any of these other conditions that you mentioned, but also just in general to say, hey, if you're like, hey, I want more help, because what you're saying is what I. What I say all the time is that it's important to know that we can recover from the stress and trauma. You know, sometimes we think, oh, this is what happened in my childhood, or this is the trauma. And then we feel stuck with that, just like you talked about being stuck with a diagnosis. But actually, what we're talking about is, no, we don't have to be stuck. There's so much that shows that the human body can heal, but it's how to harness and how to get ourselves into that. That journey into that flow, to allow it to happen. And as I'm so glad that you've that you're coming up with more and more ways to help people do that. Thank you so much for coming today, Dr. Tom. So good to see you and to hear what you're up to.

Thank you so very much for having me, Donnie. And, you know, it's so nice that, you know, so many people like yourself and myself are out there talking about how stress is more than just this word that you use on a regular basis, and we can really stress less, live more, and reset your health, like it says right behind you so much. And just to be able to share a few moments of my heart and my passion with your. Your tribe has been an honor. So thank you so much for having me.

You're welcome. You're welcome. I'll stay in touch and I'll and make sure. Yes. If you want to learn more from Dr. Tom, he has a free event coming up. I'll make sure and put the link down below so you guys can come. Go learn more from him. All right, Talk to you soon, Tom.

Thanks, Donnie.

Bye.

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