Kimberly Castello | When Doctors Say, "We Don't Know" | Episode 204

Welcome to the show. My name is Eva Vennari, founder of the Elevate Institute, and I'll be your host for today's podcast, When Doctors Say We Don't Know. This is an inclusive conversation, and so many are craving to share their stories and experiences. Today's guest is no exception. Today's honored guest is Kimberly Castello. She is a certified yoga therapist who's here to share with us how she refocused her career to help the cluster of symptoms that come with chronic fatigue. Kimberly, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Eva. Appreciate you having me.

Oh, this is one of those very big conversations. And the just being having a personal experience with chronic fatigue, um, it's interesting to me that as we are opening up and having this conversation, the experiences are so very similar. And yet doctors still are having a difficult time with this one. So share with us your experience of going from doctor to doctor and hearing the, we don't know what's wrong with you, story.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, um, it is amazing. You're right how similar our stories are. And I think until we start sharing them and talking about what we've been through, we realize we're not so alone. We're— it's not an isolated incident. And it is pretty mind-blowing that there isn't more information out there since there's so many things that are going on with so many people and it's very similar experiences. So I would say I was about 28 years old and I was working in the accounting field. I was working about 40 hours a week. I was teaching yoga for my fun job on the side, on weekends and in the evenings, and I would say I was considerably healthy and well and what I thought making all the right choices as far as, you know, just living a healthy lifestyle. And one day I was teaching a yoga class and it felt like somebody was putting weights on my arms just to reach my arms up in the air and just take an inhale and reach the arms up. And I thought, hmm, that's strange. It was kind of a heaviness, I would say. In my body. And I kind of just took a moment, a pause, and then sort of kept moving through it because that's really what my Type A personality does. I just keep pushing. Oh, you do? Yeah. And so I just, I went on to teach a second class that day, of course, because why wouldn't I?

Why stop being an overachiever there? Yes.

Okay. It's just one little obstacle somebody was throwing in front of me. No big deal. But I was traveling from one gym to the next. I had about an hour between my Saturday classes and I thought, it's really strange. I'm exhausted. And I was an energetic, kind of fast-talking, bouncing off the walls kind of person. I mean, up in the morning, no problems getting out of bed. just ready to go and sort of tackle my day. And again, I'm 28, and, you know, we feel like in our 20s, we, for the most part, if you're considered healthy, you have energy. So I went on to my next class, thought nothing of it, and over the next few weeks started to notice, not only myself but my family started to notice, I just didn't have the normal energy. I never felt rested. I was just exhausted all the time, didn't matter how much sleep I got. And I went From doctor to doctor to doctor, 5 different doctors, I would say. And I just kept, you know, saying to them, I'm tired. And, you know, this doesn't make any sense. And you get the whole, well, it's in your head. The best was, you're getting old. I'm like, I'm 28. Come on.

Oh, okay. I'm glad we can laugh about it today. But I can— I'm imagining you Across, when you're looking at this person in the eyes and hearing them say, you're getting old at 28, what was that like?

Extremely frustrating. I was really angry. I was disappointed in the medical system. I think up until that point, we're taught to really trust doctors. We go and we put ourselves, our lives, our faith in them because that's what they are trained to do. And it makes sense. And, uh, so I, for the first time, found myself questioning what doctors were saying because I'm thinking, I know myself, I'm not crazy, and I'm certainly not a lazy human being. And I think that's what bothered me the most is people acted like I was either crazy or lazy. And those are the two—

Yeah.

Yeah, very much shaming. And I thought, how is this that I'm walking out of numerous appointments, you know, 5 different doctors And nobody is thinking, hey, maybe I should validate this person's feelings. Maybe there's a reason that she doesn't feel good. And you could see it just by looking at me, how exhausted I was. And I finally— let's see, my mom finally went with me to one of the doctor's appointments, and she was such an advocate in my health. I'm so grateful for that. I think we all need somebody that's That's there, what's supporting us, validating our feelings. And she had done all this research and she went with me to a doctor and she said, this is my child. She is more tired than I've ever been in my entire life. And she's not lazy. I know her. There's something wrong and you need to test her for mono or chronic fatigue. And she fits the symptoms. And finally, For whatever reason, this particular doctor, she did the test for mono. They called me the next morning and they said, oh wow, you have mono. Like, totally shocked.

Okay.

And they put me on prenatal vitamins and said, rest. And that was the end of the story. And I thought, you're kidding me, right? I'm just supposed to lay here and just, that's it? There's nothing else you can do? And up until that point, I mean, all we heard was, oh, mono's like the kissing disease. And it was kind of like something that people sort of made fun of if you were in high school. And I look back and realize that I had it my senior year in high school. I got very ill, very similarly, but I didn't connect the dots until I was— it was recurring at 28. And I remember right before high school graduation, I got really sick and I couldn't get out of bed. And I thought, I'm not going to be able to walk in graduation. And I went back and forth to the doctors and they thought, oh, she has a cold, she's run down. They gave me a shot here and there. Nothing worked. And I just took some time off of school and rested and just kind of got my energy back up. And it's sort of, you know, I sort of kind of swept it under the rug like we do, because sometimes if you don't have a particular answer, you know, you just kind of keep moving along. What else are you supposed to do? And, uh, I, so it's 10 years later and I'm now connecting the dots like, hmm, maybe this makes a lot of sense. And, uh—

I'm curious to know, I mean, going from doctor to doctor, what kind of doctors were these? Were they specialists or were they just, you know, your general MD?

General MD, everything from, um, an MD to your OB-GYN. Um, because I was having other, um, female issues. And so I was going back and forth to all these different doctors trying to see if somebody connected all these various symptoms that I had. But at that stage, the energy was the biggest complaint that I had. That was the thing. And the thing that happened is when I went to the doctor, she said, you sound like you have multiple issues going on.

Hmm.

If you had to describe the worst symptom right now, what would it be? And I said, energy. I have no energy. I couldn't teach my classes. I couldn't get out of bed. I would walk my dog and come home and sleep for a week. I was like that exhausted, you know, like that's how I felt. Like I could rest for a week and still never have enough energy to just to do normal things like, you know, get up and shower, go to the store, things that we take for granted. And up until that point, I didn't know really, you know, that anybody could just get mono and what chronic fatigue was. And that was sort of the evolution at the beginning, I would say. Or was it? You know, of going into, evolving into chronic fatigue.

Well, and even in my experience, like what I'm hearing is you have these different doctors who are giving you portions of the story, like each portion is a puzzle piece to a larger picture. So you pretty much, it sounds to me like you're the one that had to put together the big picture and say, it's almost a self-diagnosis.

Yes, absolutely. And that's really what happened. And I think between just me trusting my instincts and, and not letting anyone make me feel that I was crazy, because you could very easily walk out of there thinking, these are medical professionals, they are trained, they study these terms, they study these illnesses. If they're telling me there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there isn't anything wrong with me. So I could see how so many people would leave feeling completely hopeless, feeling like they are making it up. Maybe, maybe they're just depressed and the depression is making them tired rather than realizing there is a root cause here causing you to be chronically fatigued. And the chronic fatigue is now causing you to be severely depressed because you can't do your normal activities, you know, and keep up in your life. So you're right. I had to start to put the pieces together. It was a lot of research. On my, my part, my mom, so much an advocate again for, you know, looking into what was going on. And she finally helped me find a specialist and an endocrinologist. And we ended up going to San Jose. And oddly, the doctors here, when I talked to them about a specialist and I requested and I required, is there someone that I could go to? They said, no, there is no one. And when I thought, that's interesting.

Well, and maybe it's— maybe if there needs to be a more complete sentence in there, there's no one under our world that can help with this. And maybe it would be really nice to say, but you're welcome to look other places.

Yeah, and I kind of— that sort of was my feeling when I left. I thought I was— again, I was so frustrated. I was disappointed in the system. And I thought, isn't their purpose to try to help people and guide them to feeling better? So even if you don't have the answer for me, why wouldn't you want to say, hey, maybe there is someone out there, and, and I will try to help you find someone. I will give you some sense of direction, or at least support you in your journey by saying you should continue to advocate. I may not have the answer, and I'm sorry that I don't. It's out of my scope. I know that's a very hard thing for them to admit.

Right.

But there's a reason that there's different layers. Like you said, what kind of a doctor were you going to?

Yeah.

So it was out of their scope, you know. So now let's look at what's, what's in someone's scope and send them to the next layer to look at. But I think that's the biggest issue, Eva, is that they don't look at the whole person. They just want to sort of put a band-aid on everything. And it's not all the doctors. I think there are some phenomenal doctors out there. I think there are some that are willing to to go the extra mile. They all— they are always in the research and comparing the stories of what's going on with their clients, trying to connect the dots, trying to find the similarities and understand, you know, so that down the road they can put a whole picture together and say, hey, this is what's going on, and maybe this is— we need to look deeper, we need to keep looking and keep digging. Um, so yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is You know, being left out there feeling tired, feeling sad and depressed, feeling frustrated, feeling defeated and isolated because you can't really explain to somebody how you feel, especially when you look healthy.

Right. It doesn't show up on an x-ray, so you must be fine. You're not in a wheelchair. You don't have crutches. You, you should be fine. You should be good to go. And this was, this was the filter through which people looked at me. So now I'm, now I'm curious to know, What, what are the symptoms that you experienced and, and even excused away, didn't realize it was part of chronic fatigue right away? So I'm looking to help the listener discover, oh, maybe I fit into this as well.

Yeah, and it's interesting because I have read what other people have gone through with chronic fatigue and they're not all exactly alike. And that was kind of mind-blowing to me because I thought, oh my gosh, I didn't have, you know, like swollen glands.

Right.

Um, that I didn't seem to notice that I had that. But for me, it was more like moving through quicksand every single day. I felt like I was basically carrying an anchor around and waking up was the most miserable part of my day. So I started to find that I would stay up because I was thinking, if I don't have to go to sleep right now, I don't have to get up and start this horrible process over and over again. So I would wake up and I'd feel like there's nothing that could will me out of the bed because I didn't have any energy. I ached. My joints would ache. My legs would feel like they couldn't hold my body up. And there was no way to explain that to people, how exhausted I was. You know, I mean, for me, it was just full-on. just being in a cloud of fatigue. I don't know how to even explain it other than just a heaviness and achiness. All of a sudden, it's like your, your joints ache. And for somebody that was doing yoga on a regular basis, which that of course changed my whole practice, but, you know, I thought, how could I feel, and at this young of an age, this exhausted, this achy, in the smallest Things were extremely hard for me. There's a fog, a brain fog that goes with it. It's almost like you can't find the words. Like you know what you're trying to say. You think it's right there. It's right on your tongue, and you just can't deliver it to somebody. Yeah.

Somehow it's missing. It's missing. It's almost like the access is completely unavailable for the moment. And then at some point, three o'clock in the morning, when you are a little bit more awake, that's that's when oh yeah, I meant I was trying to describe car. Cardboard, right?

Exactly.

And it's the everyday words that we use all the time to hold conversation. I found them to be completely missing. Is that what you found too?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's interesting you said 3 in the morning because my energy would go up later in the day and I would get like this kind of burst of energy. And then I would be like, I'm going to get everything done that I could possibly get done that I wasn't able to get done the previous 4 days. And then I would just wear myself out because I thought I wasn't able to do laundry, I wasn't able to clean my room or my house or get those dishes done. You know, get the bathroom organized, whatever it was that we sort of do on a regular basis, even if it's tasks that we don't really feel like doing, like cleaning or, you know, just like, you know, whatever projects we have around the house that are just sort of mundane and, you know, we just have to get it done, right?

Yeah.

And I would say, you know, you have chronic fatigue when you're excited to do all of those things.

Oh, I can't wait till I have the energy to do— to brush my hair, to get up in the morning and feel like I'm ready for my day, to feed the cats. I have cats. To feed the cats, you know. And poor cats are looking up at me and going, can you please Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's, there are people and, and, uh, that depend on you. And at some point, um, I want to, I'm curious to know, did you go through a period of time where you doubted your ability to be in, be a productive part of society?

Oh, absolutely. I feel like it crushes your self-confidence. And I always felt like a very strong, confident, independent human being. And I was always confident in my abilities. I actually prided myself in— I'm a phenomenal multitasker. I am super efficient. I can get things done in a short amount of time. And I always just felt like I was capable of doing whatever I put my mind to. And all of a sudden, my self-worth was just going down the drain because I thought, I don't feel productive. Not being productive means what am I accomplishing? So if I'm not productive and I'm not accomplished, who am I? You know, what, what do I even contribute and put out into the world that's of any worth? And what value do I have anymore? And then people are around you not understanding how you're suffering. You have friends that you grew up with that they see that you don't feel like yourself and you're struggling, but they don't understand because they can't visually, you know, it's not visible to them on the outside. Like you said, it's almost like There's so many illnesses like this that are silent.

Yeah.

And that's the really sad thing to me. And it's an eye-opener when you get chronic fatigue or something similar, that an autoimmune disease where people can't see the symptoms, but you feel it in your body and they don't know your body's fighting so hard to keep up with just simple tasks in your everyday routine. And then you're so exhausted by trying to keep Basically a facade up for everybody so they don't feel crappy.

Well, yeah, and that takes energy in and of itself to do that. Yeah, I can understand a person who decides when, you know, I'm going to become a recluse. I'm just— I'm not going to be social. I'm going to just take care of the basics. So I'm curious, like this— this we talked about in the very beginning how this— you had to refocus your career. So you were an accountant, and then tell us the story, like how you went from— from that and what you decided to do to Course correct.

Yeah. Oh, it's a great story as far as I'm concerned because I—

Do share.

Well, and I mean in the sense that the reaction I got from people was, I mean, it's, it's almost, it's laughable to me because I think it reminded me how little people really understood what I was going through. And I think you can completely relate, um, especially based on the wonderful work that you're doing. If you think about it, once you have an experience like this, when you get a glimmer of hope, when you have a moment where you're like, I can do this, I can get my life back together, I can start moving forward, and you have just a sense of what it is like to feel like yourself again, which is like human is the best way I can describe it, and you have some energy, you think, I am not wasting what I've learned.

Mm-hmm.

On doing something I'm not truly joyful and passionate about. And you also have this whole idea of, if this is what I'm going through, what are other people going through? What are people going through that maybe didn't have someone advocating for or with them, or didn't have somebody that gave them some insight into how to start feeling better? So you think there's so much work to do, and I didn't get sick just to get sick and just waste my time and throw me behind in life. So I thought, you know, the personality that I already had, I thought, I'm going to take this and run with it and do something worthwhile with it. And because I already had that connection to teaching yoga, and it made me— it sort of groomed me into becoming someone that really loved public speaking and lecturing and sort of sharing the joy of what I was learning from yoga, which was I fell into yoga because I liked, you know, working out. I liked staying flexible and, you know, that sort of the physical aspect, which is what most people find yoga for. And then when I couldn't do all those physical movements and it wasn't about fancy poses or twisting myself into a pretzel or standing on my head, none of that stuff felt good.

It can't when you have aches and pains. How can you, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the last thing on your mind. What do I care about any of that? I sort of stepped away from that. I searched for a form of yoga that would replenish my energy. And I started to move towards restorative yoga. And I started to look at the nervous system. And when I recognized how much this had shifted and affected and damaged my nervous system, and it was keeping me in a chronic state of the sympathetic nervous system, that fight or flight, I was living there. And I started to research and I realized the more people have spent time in a chronic issue, a chronic illness of sort, you're in a chronic state. Your body goes into this new norm without your permission, without chatting with you about it. No, no discussion. Just runs with it and you're on board, not even knowing it. And you don't realize you're on edge. You're in stress mode all the time. Little things will sort of sets you off because your nervous system is sort of shaky all the time. And it's always operating in that state of what you need, you know, when you need to react and you— and there's a dangerous situation, your body doesn't know, and it needs to be reintroduced and reinformed essentially to the parasympathetic system, that rest and digest. And so I realized that restorative— I found a phenomenal teacher and mentor and I started practicing restorative. those passive postures with, with lots of props to support the body. So I could then benefit from opening the spine and the hips and getting a little bit of feeling of movement without making effort, which is exactly what you need when you have chronic fatigue, because you don't have the effort.

Yes.

All you had to do was set up a few pillows, like yoga bolsters, lay there and breathe. And I realized the whole core of my practice, the shift in my practice was the breathing and those long, slow, deep breaths focused on the exhalation. And I started to notice I felt better. And I started to realize that was how I could replenish and take care of myself. That was my contribution to myself. And as I got the energy back, I found this program in LA and I went to a clinical yoga therapy program for 4 years at Loyola Marymount University. And it was the first yoga therapy program developed at a university to— that was taught by doctors that were also yoga teachers and yoga therapists that felt that integrating the modalities of yoga, the techniques of yoga, the breathing and therapeutic slow movements, meditation, often even visualization, including that and how they were treating their patients, they were seeing so many positive responses from their patients, not just using just Western medicine, not just using, you know, what they were trained in in school. And so they started to offer that, whether it was through their physical therapy practice or as MDs, they believed in directing people into breathing and yoga. And again, yoga in the sense of just gentle movement and taking care of your body through the breath and meditation, very calm, gentle, subtle things and techniques. And I started to realize once I went to school searching for more answers about my chronic fatigue, I found more and more illnesses that people were suffering from that were chronic, that were silent, that nobody recognized, that people were looking at you like you were crazy for saying, or claiming I should say, that you had it. And they just thought people were just making stuff up or crazy, or, you know, and it was exactly how I felt. And it felt like I was with my people for the first time. I felt like somebody spoke my language. I was in a universe that made sense for me again, and there was no turning back. So for me, I kept stepping further and further away from accounting work, which Everyone else in my life thought, why? Why would you do this? Why would you step away from a very solid field, a very respected field, to go do this sort of woo-woo kind of work?

More, more, you're crazy, right? The crazy.

Yeah, I think people thought I just got crazier. It was that chronic fatigue. It just flipped me and I just got even kookier than usual.

So, boy, she's really gone off the deep end. But really, this was a course correction. This was You know, in your words and mine too, I use the same words. It's like, it's, it's about finding the answer and following it regardless of what other people think.

Yeah. And that's a hard path to take sometimes, especially because most of us, including myself, we want other people's respect. We want the validation. And isn't that hilarious that that's part of having a chronic issue is feeling that someone's validating your feelings and believing that you have something. So I went from people believing and not just believing, but understanding what it felt like Like, how could you be this tired every day? How could you have so many other problems? Because then other things, as you know, come with chronic fatigue. Then all of a sudden other little things start to pop up in your body and it's just a slew of other issues that come up. It just one thing leads to another. And, you know, I later found out that, you know, this was all just another piece to a bigger puzzle, like you said. So it was just more about figuring out what happened first, the chicken or the egg, you know? So. But in doing that, it was sort of like I went from one thing to another where people were like, okay, so she's sick. Now she starts feeling better and she goes to do this craziness that makes no sense, but they couldn't connect to how it was making me feel better. It was keeping my stress down. You need to keep your stress down, obviously, when you're dealing with chronic fatigue because the stress just exacerbates the fatigue.

Well, and we want to, we want to delineate. I mean, there's a difference between stress that we experience out in the world that's Drama, right? Or poor decision-making of any kind at all. And when you're tired, that happens easily. Um, arguments with other people. And then you've got the internal stress of things that are mechanically going wrong inside of the body.

Absolutely. And that's a lot of stress that people don't understand. When your body is not working the way it should, you're angry at your body, right? You're angry at the world. You know, especially when you feel in your heart that you have been practicing and doing things that are good for you to keep your body healthy. And that's not always that simple because you could be doing things from a, from a mental and emotional perspective. Me running around and draining myself all the time and teaching a ton of classes on top of working 40+ hours a week in accounting wasn't helping. So there was just a little piece that was already lingering in me to get And then it just got worse and amplified by some of my habits, perhaps.

So I find that to be an underlying theme. It's a, it's like a snowball that starts at the top of the hill. You don't realize that it's going to be big at the bottom of the hill until you're like, oh wow, that's— I didn't realize I had developed that big of a problem. But I mean, as far as, as the work that you're, you're doing now, you, you mentioned a few symptoms that you said were not recognized as related to chronic fatigue as you were going through your healing journey. Um, so who, who do you help now with your yoga practice? Where are you focusing?

Sure.

Yeah.

I'm focusing my practice on back pain because I continue to struggle with back pain. It's not because back pain is cured. It's that we learn to manage these symptoms better. We learn to understand what things help us. And you can get to a point where things are at bay, where you're Fatigue is better. Your energy is up. You learn to manage your stress better. Like you said, internal and external stress, the stress we put on ourselves, the stress other people put on us, the stress the world creates around us. And so I've shifted my practice to teaching people how to reinform their nervous system, how to reinform their body, to take on tools and techniques such as breathing techniques that are very specific to what their body needs. Whether it's teaching them how to take longer exhalations, how to breathe with their diaphragm versus against their diaphragm, what we call reverse breathing, because a lot of times people are breathing against, you know, their body. And so that's a fight right there. And then you shorten your breath with that. A lot of times people have pain in their body, as we know, and so they're holding tension. And so the breath is sort of stagnant. So I'm teaching them how to understand what's going on in their body. how they're breathing, where their discomfort is, and the root of that discomfort. And a lot of back pain comes up for a lot of my clients. And it was really such a big thing for me because I thought, this is so widespread. And I was struggling with it, constant low back pain. It later led to neck pain because of the tension and the stress and just holding your body upright was so tiring. And that created a lot of neck pain and discomfort for me. So I started shifting to a practice of where I wanted people to understand that yoga is accessible to everybody, because if you can breathe, you can do yoga. Yoga is truly the relationship with ourself. And so that's where I'm at, is offering people a program where they can learn how to take care of themselves, lower their stress, decrease their back pain and discomfort. And how to get their energy up through movement, through integrating these techniques just a few minutes a day in their own home very easily with no extra things that they need to grab or buy or spend money or time with. Just things that you can take with you anywhere you go, whether you're doing it at your home, in your car, doing some breathing, or, you know, at work, whatever it is, and teaching them how to integrate just new habits, as we call in yoga samskaras. So a lot of it is understanding what our habits are and how we can just bring in new positive habits that are better supporting our body and especially our nervous system. So I'm very passionate about that because I think it all goes hand in hand. If you have back pain, back pain creates fatigue because you're exhausted from struggling with it. If you have fatigue, you know, that of course can cause pain in the body. And if you have stress, there's this whole cycle that I sort of teach people, the stress cycle with the sympathetic versus parasympathetic system and how it all works together as far as like increasing or decreasing your energy or your pain. So it's a, it's a vicious cycle, but it's a cycle that we can break. It's a cycle that if we understand it, we can learn how we can sort of replenish our body and support ourselves better so we can start feeling better and sort of recognizing ourselves again, you know?

Well, I'm— and I'm curious too, because yoga is typically done in a studio and it's done in person. So how are you meeting with your clients now?

Sure. That's such a great question because it's— if you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have said when people first started saying they could do things online and they were offering videos and I was completely against it. Because I was very concerned of how that would transfer to somebody online and if they would be getting what they needed. But I have seen such a shift, especially in what's gone on in the world recently, where we still need these tools. And I started hopping on Zoom, um, just recently this year, earlier in March, and working with my clients. Both in a group setting and in a private setting, and they're in their home and I'm in my home, and the connection is amazing. The feedback is amazing. First of all, people are comfortable. They don't have, you know, any excuse that they can't get to a studio. They don't have to be uncomfortable. They don't have to worry about what they're wearing. They don't have to worry about what someone else is thinking or watching them.

Or watching. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. So it's just creating a comfortable, quiet space in our home, which is a great habit to teach ourselves anyway, because that's hard to do when we're at home. We can get really distracted. I can too. I can find 20 things to do rather than try to take care of myself. So it helps me remind myself that I have to continue to do the work, especially if I'm going to put that out there to people and I'm going to offer that to people and ask that of them. I have to do it as well. And I'm very honest about that, that it's a practice.

Mm-hmm.

So I, I work with them on Zoom and It's, it's amazing. And I think the difference is, is I feel so confident in my ability to transfer my teachings online that I know by just visually what I'm seeing and what I'm hearing from somebody and how they're responding, how they're moving, how they're breathing, what their feedback is, I know that I'm able to give them quality instruction. And I realized that, you know, it's going on out there, so I might as well show up and put my expertise out there. And let somebody benefit from that. Because in person, honestly, I really didn't feel it was necessary to do a lot of touch and hands-on. There is a way to teach where you can see the expression on someone's face. You can see where they're holding tension in their body, how they move, how they breathe. So there's a way to do it anyway with, with more verbal cues. And I realized I was already doing more verbal cues than hands. hands-on cues, which that's a whole nother story. It's not that that's not okay. It's just, there's a time and a place and it has to be the right, right situation. So I felt like, okay, I can do this. And I hopped on within the first week or two and I thought, this is brilliant. This is amazing. Because here's the other thing.

Yeah.

Think about this, for the people that have chronic issues, for the people that are exhausted, just getting in your car and driving somewhere. And how about back pain? Now I'm asking you to sit and be crunched in with flexion in your spine, sitting in your car, getting tighter, and then your exhaustion. And now you have to go to and from a studio and get in and out all the time.

With other drivers. Yes.

Yeah.

So dealing with them.

Yep. We get ourselves stressed out going to the studio and then we're like yelling in the car or our heart rate's going up. And then we get out and we're like, deep breath, let's do some yoga.

Right. And then you get out of yoga class after being nice and zen and You're back in your car and guess what? You're back to where you were before. So it is that vicious cycle. But if someone is listening to this and they're like, oh, I want to work with Kimberly, I want to get to know more about you, how can they reach out? How can they connect? What do you have for our listeners?

Sure, absolutely. So they can contact me at info@kimberlycastelloyoga.com. And they can visit me also on my website, and it's just www.kimberlycastelloyoga.com. So it's just my whole name spelled out. And also I have a Facebook group, Yoga for Back Pain Relief, where I offer free videos, tips, and resources every single day, and I go live every week, and anybody is welcome to hop on and join. It's a private Facebook group. So I admit you into the group when you request it. And then I talk about all of this. I talk about how stress affects us and how to reduce our stress. I share some of my favorite stretches that have helped me for relieving back pain. And it includes stretching your hips, your hamstrings, and the whole body because everything is connected. Just like with this illness, everything is connected. Everything's connected with the spine, right? And with the stress.

Yes.

So they will get a lot of value-packed videos and tips. And I go live every week to talk about different topics and people can request things that they wanna hear more about. And I'm there to talk with them again, live. I also do private messaging with them and I'm available for a consult. So anybody could reach out at any time and just see if I'm a good fit for them and if I can help them in any way. And it's there's so many different ways that you could connect with me and follow what I'm doing and see if there's some resources that could help you.

That's beautiful. I think I'm going to join the group because I want to know what you're doing.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah, absolutely. So just just to make sure, I'm I'm going to repeat that. So it's info at KimberlyCastelloYoga.com. I'm going to spell out your last name for everybody. It's C A S T E L L O Y O G A dot com. And this information will be on the show notes page. So if you're driving and can't write it down right now, don't be frustrated. We're gonna have that all for you. So just to wrap it up, I want to give you one final question, Kimberly. And I ask everyone this question because we all have a different answer. And sometimes hearing, hearing your answer is— it could be key for somebody to get out of their doldrums wherever they are.

Yeah.

So what do you feel is the most important important thing to remember when searching for answers?

I would say continue to trust your instincts and what you're feeling in your body, no matter what someone is telling you and what you hear from somebody. When you walk away, remind yourself, you know your body better than anyone else.

Yes, I agree with you 100%. That's absolutely Beautiful. So thank you again. Thank you for being a guest and for sharing your story on When Doctors Say We Don't Know. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's been a real joy. And I normally, you know, this is such an involved conversation and so worth having. So anyways, I think this has been fantastic. So thank you, all of you, for listening in to When Doctors Say We Don't Know. This has been absolutely an engaging conversation, and I'm hopeful that those of you listening will hear a message of hope So you too can turn your experience of pain into triumph. If you are driving and can't click on the links to the show notes, remember you can always hop onto theelevateinstitute.com and follow the podcast links for today's show in the menu. There's more to talk about. Oh my gosh, there's more stories coming up next week. Uh, so tune into When Doctors Say We Don't Know. This is Eva Vennari reminding you to question everything.