From Symptom Stack to Bioenergetic Healing with Heather Gray

Welcome to the Wellness Sherpa Podcast, where we engage with passionate leaders, holistic thinkers, and disruptors who courageously share their personal journey, mission, and wisdom with you. Together, we create a safe space to empower you to live your best, most vital life. Thanks for being here. All right, well, I am so excited to be here with the lovely Heather Gray, who I met, gosh, not that long ago, but I feel like I've known you forever. We hit it off at. Was it mind share. I'm trying to remember where we first met. Mineshare and then Dragonfly and many of the events that we've been to.

It was a very, very vulnerable. With you in the room and the healing. And we had just met and it was very. Yeah, intense.

Game on.

It was game on.

Game on. And Heather, her nickname, I guess, or your. I don't know, you're known as the Lime Bo. And yet Lime Boss is just a little piece of kind of the healing world that you tap into and connect into. And you have your own podcast called the Line Boss podcast, is that correct?

Absolutely.

Okay, so why don't you share a little bit more about how you became the Lion Boss, a little bit about your journey and what launched you into the holistic healing world?

Yeah, absolutely. I usually like to start at the beginning. Right. You know, and I. I start every story the same, that I was basically born full of, like many of you can. Right. Relate to being constipated at a really early age. I was like 4 years old, and my feet would fall asleep from sitting on the potty for so long. And that began the let's throw band aids at symptoms, you know, area of the medical world. They were throwing nasty thick oils down my throat, you know, stool softeners. But nobody was trying to figure out why this 4 year old was constipated. Hindsight's 20 20. My uncle had committed suicide that year. There was a lot of early childhood trauma. I think it pretty much kicked off my celiac autoimmune. And I was also eating a standard American diet. Right. The SAD diet, you know, so it started setting me up to be the perfect host. Right. At a pretty early age. And then there was a lot of, you know, I was raised by addicts, alcoholics, so there was a lot of chaos in the home. I'm pretty sure there was a lot of mold exposure going on in those homes back then, because as I think back, you know, I remember my mom blow drying my hair and almost passing out of. Of heat overheating, which is not normal. Either. But there were a lot of things that made me more sensitive as a kid, and I think mold had something to do with that. So fast forward. Lyme disease over 27 years before I finally got diagnosed. And then. Or, sorry, I back that up just a little bit. I didn't start showing symptoms until I was 15, so I got bit by a tick when I was 13, started showing symptoms when I was 15. When I first went to the psych ward for my first suicide attempt, I had many. Unfortunately, that's actually one of the most common ways that folks with Lyme disease typically die is with. Is with suicide, because our brains are inflamed, our bodies. It's such a complex, complicated disease. We've been gaslighted. You know, if you look up the definition of gaslighted, you know, in the dictionary, I'm pretty sure it's got a lime patient there, because the CDC just recognized, even a year ago, one year ago, it recognized chronic. Chronic lime is an illness. The disease that I've had my whole freaking life finally got recognized. And even now, they're starting to back pedal on, on the language around that. So it's. It was a. An interesting journey, to say the least. You know, by the time it was all said and done, I had three autoimmune diseases, lime disease, two co infections, mold toxicity, cavitations, heavy metals. And that's what started me off in the natural, you know, alternative field, because I. I knew if I continue down the Western Med path, I wouldn't be here today because they just started throwing napalm at a body that had been sick for decades. You know, I basically said, I.

You were living. You were swimming in toxic soup, right?

You. Oh, yeah, I still wasn't pooping.

One of those. One of those is intense. And you had so many things happening.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so how old were you when you. You took kind of matters into your own hands and said, okay, I've got to look at the cause of what's going on here and not just throw something at it. Trying to alleviate a symptom.

Yeah, absolutely. I was 34 when I finally got diagnosed. It was around 2013, maybe a little earlier it, but it was funny. So I did the Western Med route for like six months, thought I was going to die. And then I heard on a podcast, that's why these podcasts are so important. I heard on a podcast, Sean Croxton, right, the og he had underground wellness and the founder of fdn, Reed Davis, talking about, you know, the foundations of health and you got to make sure that the detox pathways are opening and you got to make sure that your hormones are balanced and that you're, you know, healing the leaky gut and, you know, all the things. And I was a silly hair stylist at the time. I didn't have a medical background, but intuitively I knew that's the direction I needed to go. And the cool part about that program is that you do some lab testing, some functional labs on yourself, so you become the. The guinea pig, right? And I thought, okay, I'm going to get some answers, you know? And it turned out I had Blastocystis hominis, which is a very common parasite, especially with people who have pets that cause a lot of bloating and digestive issues. Right? You know, I had a liver that was congested, my hormones were in the tank, completely, like, non existent, you know, so it was just. It was brilliant to have this piece of paper and go, look, it's not all in my head. Like, there's really something there. And then I had something to work with. And that's what started Journey in the Natural and the Alternative Health Space.

That's amazing. Amazing that you trusted your intuition and followed that path. And so you started doing these tests and getting answers, at least as to what was going on. And where did you go? Where did you go from there? What happened next?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So you think, right, Especially lime folks, we get that diagnosis and we're like, I got a golden ticket. We think that's, you know, that's the end. And really, oh, my gosh, the whole next chapter is like, hold on to your ass, you know, we're in for a ride. So I did the FDN model, which is diet, rest, exercise, stress reduction, supplementation. Notice how supplementation is the last thing on that model. Sadly, too many. You know, even functional practitioners, they lean a little too heavy on supplements. They're just kind of trading that medical model for prescriptions for supplements which are healthier, but it's still not getting to the root cause. So I clean up my diet, I start pooping on a regular basis, I start healing my gut, and man, I am like 80% better in three months. Like, it was ridiculous. It was like a miracle. And I kept hitting a freaking plateau. I just kept. And this was before people were really talking about mold like you they are these days. And re Davis, thank God, he's like, I'm doing some research and finding out things about mold. I want to do a. A mark on swab. On you. And do you think that you're living in mold? And I'm like, well, the house that we moved into, these people enclosed a hot tub into the home with drywall and carpet. Oh, my. And we did the rep. We did the remediation ourselves because we didn't know any better. So. Yeah. So then I had to peel back that layer, right? And then a couple years go by and I hit another wall, and it turns out I had cavitations. So cavitations are what happen when dentists take out your wisdom teeth or give you a root canal, right. And it leaves behind bacteria and infection. And I basically had this going on in my body for 15 years. So it was. It was horrible. And it leaves your troops scattered, right? If your body's trying to fight off one infection, it's hard to deal with other infections. So then I had to go in and have cavitation surgery done. And then fast forward like another year or so, and it's the trauma. I'm starting to gain weight again. I'm starting to get reactive again. I'm starting to, you know, a lot of my old symptoms are coming back. I'm like, what the heck's going on? I asked the universe, what's my next step? And I read the book. The Body keeps score, right? So massive triggering. Yeah, phenomenal. But, man, whole, be prepared. It's. It's a tough one to get through. But it was the first time I really heard about, you know, this autonomic nervous system. And we're stuck in fight or flight, right? And you can't heal if you're stuck in fight or flight. And if you've got trauma, whether it's early childhood trauma or trauma from toxins and, you know, infections like I had, right? It's all gets accumulated in the same way. And so I had to start working on the nervous system and the mindset stuff. And then the last little piece was kind of the bioenergetic stuff, which I love. That's where we really geek out, you know, because so many folks, it's so funny. It's like Western med does one thing, and then the functional practitioners came in and they're like, we get to the root cause. And I'm like, ah, actually, if you're not messing around with the bioenergetic field, you're not getting to the root cause, because there's. There's even a step further than that. And so all these pieces had to come together. And, you know, now I've. I've put Lyme in Remission. I haven't had an issue with it in over three years. You know, I've detox, molded. I've reversed two out of three autoimmune diseases. I've lost 100 pounds. I'm no longer suicidal.

And here's, here's the sad part, is that you're not unique. I mean, you're unique, but everything you just shared is so common, is that the illnesses are layers upon layers upon layers. And we have a tendency to look at one sliver, right? Okay. The physical body. Let's go look. Let's look at, you know, what's going on. Oh, and then you peel that out. Oh, underneath that is this. You've got mold, you've got lime, you've got parasites, right? I have a device called firefly in my healing practice called Divine Health alliance. And it scans the body and it tells you and everybody. I mean, I have not met a person yet who doesn't have some type of CO infection, which means they've had Lyme at some point in their life. And these are people that have major gut issues, right? And they've got parasites and they've got mold, and they've got fungus, and they've got bacterias and Epstein Barr. And when you put all this together, right, it starts to really paint a picture as to what is going on. And then you've got to figure out what's next. How do you kind of pull this apart? And then to your point, you've got the bioenergetic field, right? Because we're all energy. And if you aren't addressing that and some of the emotional trauma, you're still missing part of the. The whole. Absolutely right.

110. And, you know, it's sad. So Lyme clients who come to me, they've had to learn how to be their own advocate because of being gaslighted for so long about not being believed. And so they come to me very sophisticated, right? They've had to become their own health advocate. And it's. It's sad because they're like, I've tried that and it doesn't work. I've tried that and it doesn't work. And sadly, I found that a lot of times they have these beautiful help pieces to their health puzzle, but they're putting them in the wrong order or they're just like missing a little corner piece that makes the whole thing click together, right? And so that's why it's great when you can have somebody who addresses all the different pieces. Because sadly, like I said, you Know, functional practitioners are just going to be focusing on. On the physical. You know, you've got spiritual healers and energetic healers, and they're just focusing on the bioenergetics. And there's, there's pieces to all of it that really do need to. To talk to each other. It's like a symphony, right? We need to get all the. All the. Or, you know, the string instruments, you know, synchronized with the horn section and, you know, vice versa. Right.

And it's that harmony that creates the vitality in our bodies. And again, missing one piece will still be out of sync, which is. So where are you today? So you. You have. You support others in the Lyme journey. And I love the fact, you know, I totally agree with what you say that we, you know, we have to be our own health advocates because there really isn't a holistic place where, Where. Where practitioners are looking at all this. We're starting to. Right. We're starting to, as a practitioner base, realize that it's the. It's the physical, it's the mental, it's the emotional, it's the energetic, it's the spiritual, it's all these pieces together. But it's really just becoming more mainstream now. And so, you know, part of, part of my mission, you know, I went through cancer eight years ago, is to help people create that blueprint. So what recommendations would you have? So if somebody comes to you and they've got these issues, where do you start to kind of pull the spaghetti of toxins apart?

Absolutely.

What's your process?

You know, a lot of times it's. It's starting off with a vision to remind a person while they're doing it, why they're doing it. Because it can get a little complicated sometimes. It can get overwhelming. It's. It's reprogramming, basically, right? Just like Dr. Joe Dispenza says, you know, we've got to change your personal personality to change your personal identity. Wait, personal reality. Ah, I totally bought that up. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, if nothing changes, nothing changes. There's so many of these little. Right. Platitudes because they, they become that way because it's. It's the truth, right? So it's. It's overcoming a lot of limiting beliefs. It's a lot of, you know, like I said, the trauma. I start a lot with somatic, experiencing, work with breath, work with tapping. Because again, all the best supplements in the world, all the best diet in the world, all the best everything. If you're still stuck in fight or flight.

Right.

If there's always a tiger chasing you, you're not going to be able to heal. And all these other modalities aren't going to work as well. And so it's a combination of, you know, diet, you know, looking for hidden toxins. And like I said, everybody's different. Kind of depends on what their medical history is, what they're showing up with, how, what they're already doing. A lot of the clients that I'm working with are already, thank God, gluten free, dairy free, you know, corn free. So they're taking out a lot of the inflammatory foods that are kind of covered in pesticides and glyphosate and a lot of stuff that's causing these leaky gut type issues, you know, so it's, it's a combination of, you know, diet, like I said, dialing in sleep, making sure they're detoxing properly before we ever, you know, go to war with a pathogen. Right.

Yeah. And that is so important because, you know, I get in my practice a lot of people that come in that say, okay, I'm ready to do a parasite cleanse. Absolutely not. Their, their detox pathways aren't open, their methylation pathways aren't working, and that's a total disaster. I've seen, I've had a few younger women take, you know, oh, wait, I got this, I'm fine. And they get horrible acne, they get bloating, and it's because the methylation pathways aren't open. So talk a little bit more about why that matters and, you know, what folks can do to do that. You know, I work with plant stem cells. That's one brilliant way to do that. But what else do you do to help your, your folks do that? To open their pathways?

Yeah, I mean, obviously get them pooping if they're not pooping, because that's, that's the biggest one is constipation. You know, if you are not having a bowel movement every day, you are constipated. And it's just recycling those toxins. You're recycling spent hormones. You're becoming estrogen dominant, you know, so coffee enemas, like I still, you know, fdm, when I was going through the program, they recommend them three to four times a week for months. And that was the best I had ever felt like. It was incredible. I spending decades constipated. It was incredible. Now I do them once a week. You know, it's part of my Friday morning. Heather's doing her coffee enema like clockwork. Because it's what helps keep, you know, that we, we talk about. Detox bucket. I actually have a detox thimble. So it doesn't take much. Right. For my detox thimble to become overflowed. So I. Every week, Every week it's. It's a coffee enema. On Fridays, I do dry skin brushing. I do cat castor oil packs. At least three times a week, I'm in my sauna. Three to four times a week, I'm in Epsom salt baths. You know, two times a week. So these are my non negotiables because like I said, between my crappy genetics that, you know, I have no. My detox pathways are just broken and then, you know, have be. Yeah. So every week that's what I do. I love, love, love. I love detoxing. Like, if I were to rebrand, it's like the Detox Diva or something along those lines. Because it just moves the. So well with. With folks. We live in a toxic environment. This world is not conducive for human health, unfortunately. And where our livers, our kidneys are being inundated with, with man made, you know, synthetic chemicals, toxins that were never, never, never supposed to be in our environments.

Yeah. One of the ones I just heard of recently is tire dust. That one of the biggest things that clogs our bodies and our blood is tire dust. And it, you know, it wasn't around 200 years ago. And here we are, we're breathing it in, day in and day out, not knowing it. And it's just collecting in our systems. Right. And that's an unknown one. Nobody's talking about that. And then you have the obvious ones, right? What's being sprayed? It's what's in our food, in our water. I remember about 10 years ago being at a Whole Foods and I was getting some organic produce and then the water sprayer came on and all of a sudden I went, wait a minute, food. And so I looked over at the. The young man who was in the produce section. I said, I'm just curious, is that filtered water? And he said, no, ma', am, it's from the, you know, it's from the county. And I went, wow. So my organic food is no longer organic because it's got, you know, it's got chlorine and it's got fluoride and everything else on it. And that was just such an aha moment to me. So really, you know, that being our own advocate, asking questions, being Intentional about, you know, what we're putting in and on our bodies is so critical now. Whereas, you know, 20 years ago, I would say, oh, I'm going to do a detox in the springtime, and in the, you know, in the fall, I would do one twice a year just to clean up my body. And so, you know, your point, which is so critical, is that we've got to be doing this daily. We've got to be thinking about, okay, what's coming in and how do we get more out than what we're bringing in.

Absolutely.

That we can be healthy. And it shows up in so many interesting ways. Right. Not going to the bathroom. Brain fog is one I hear a lot about. Bloating in the gut is another. Right. Those are the symptoms that are the output of what's going on.

Absolutely. Exhaustion, chronic pain. Yeah. All of it.

Yeah. Pain in the joints. Yeah. It's. It's constant. So what advice would you give to somebody who's kind of just coming onto this journey of how to get started, where to. Where to go? You know, do you recommend different. You know, you talked about diet. I use the word lifestyle. It's like, really, we've got to make some lifestyle changes. Where would you guide somebody?

You know, that's a good question. You know, obviously, I'd say duh myself. Or if you're, you know, if. Be open to having a team, you know, if. So if you have a practitioner that doesn't have all the modalities that I talked about, that's great. Like you said, there's not a whole lot of them out there, you know, so being okay with having a team behind your back and to be patient. Right. Because if you've been sick 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, you know, you're not going to walk out of this overnight, you know, so stick with it. Don't give up, you know, but make sure that your practitioner has some sort of goals that are, you know, points that you're trying to meet every couple months. You know, like, I have an intake form that I have the refill out. It's like 600 questions long. They cuss me out every single time. But it's a great litmus test and it's free. Right. For the most part, when, you know, my clients are working with me to, you know, to gauge where they're at every three months, because, yes, it takes sometimes a while to move the needle, but we still should be moving the needle a little bit. And so if we're not moving the needle, I don't want you to go nine months with going, okay, what the hell's going on? We might need to pivot, right? So making sure that, you know, your practitioner is kind of staying on top of those, those metrics because it can be very, you know, a lot of times you need to pivot. A lot of times you think that it might be because these things overlap each other. Mold toxicity looks a lot like Lyme disease, which looks a lot like, you know, fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue. You know, so they all, you know, sometimes you might be chasing one. One right. Rabbit, and it's, it's a different one over here that you need to be looking at. And so, like I said, just making sure. You're asking a lot of questions. Be open, be coachable. My God, be coachable. I still had a client. He was with me for a year and a half, and I thought he understood, and he didn't because even towards the end there, you know, my anxiety is really bad. What supplement can you, you know, give me today? And I'd go, did you do grounding today? Did you get your feet outside on the, on the earth? Did you get at least 20 minutes of movement? Have you, you know, been out in the sun? Have you done your breath work? Have you done your gratitud? Oh, no, no. You know, he just wanted a supplement because we're kind of brainwashed into this, you know, pill for every ill mindset. Yeah. And I absolutely refused. And he's no longer working with me now, you know, which is heartbreaking because I know damn well I could get, you know, he could get better, but he wasn't willing to do this stuff. It's, it's free, a lot of it. Right. Grounding, walking, breath, sunshine, cold therapy. Right. But they, they so still so many folks see it as woo, woo, and there's.

Yeah. And I think, Heather, that's such a, an important point is mind. It's, it's a mindset shift. Right. We have kind of grown up in this world the last 50 years of, oh, I have an ache, give me a pill. And it's shifting the mindset to say, I have an ache. What's going on in my body and inquiring and make that, making that connection to our own bodies, right? So that we say, huh, there's something that my body's communicating to me and I've got to pay attention. I think that's one. Number two, something you said earlier is, you know, we've been brought up in this model of standard of Care. There's a standard of care for everybody. So your, you know, gut issues, Lyme issues, are the same as everybody else's, and they're not. Right. So it's. It's a unique program for each of us to, you know, start stepping on the. On the path for. And then I think the third thing you mentioned is having a plan, right? Is you work with folks and you give them a plan, and you work toward that plan. And I've always used the. The gauge of. For every year that somebody has had a chronic issue, it takes at least a month. At least a month to really start to shift that. And I don't know if you agree with that or not, but that's what I've experienced in working with the. The plant stem cells. And I've also worked with essential oils that, you know, somebody's had diabetes for 20 years. It's not going to go away overnight because you're. You're resolving the terrain that's been out of balance, Right. So it's not an overnight. And that patience is so important. So it's patience. It's education. It's having a plan. And I love the fact that you mentioned having a healing team. Right. Often, you know, our imbalances are so complicated that it's never just one thing. Wouldn't that be great? Right? Just pull up. It's, hey, I just have one thing going on. But we're layers and layers, right? So it's almost like unraveling and putting the puzzle pieces together to get the whole complete picture that somebody can heal and then giving them wins along the way, if you will.

Absolutely. You know, I actually just made a video for my team to edit earlier because I'm just so.

I'm.

I'm pissed off and fired up about this trend with influencers, Right. Especially in the lime world. We've got a couple, you know, influencers that, you know, got themselves better yet, you know, with the help of all these practitioners. Great. And now they claim that they can help others on this path. They've got no continuing education whatsoever. So it very much is a one size fits. All, right? So just because somebody's got 20, 30, 40,000 followers, right, and they talk about their journey, that's still their journey. And everybody is so freaking different. So the only way you're going to get better with that person is if your body happens to fall in line with the same way that they got better. Right? And so then so many people get frustrated, right, because they've spent time and they spent money and they didn't get any better. Or then you got the opposite, right? Everybody, you know, doctors are gods. And sadly, doctors will tell you they've only got six to eight hours worth of nutritional, you know, experience in their whole doctorate, schooling, career, which is ridiculous because that is the very foundation of health. You know, what we put in our mouth, what we put in our food, I mean. Yeah. On our bodies. And so we've got, like, this weird little spectrum of. We've got, like, influencers and we got doctors and. And, you know, I'm telling people to just to let go of the hype. You know, you got to cut through the noise and really, you know, dial in and focus in. You know, somebody who's got some personal experience plus continuing education, that they follow along the same lines and that they've got social proof. Right. Testimonials on their page to show that they're. What they're doing is working right. Yeah. It's just. It's maddening out there. I love what social media has done in so many aspects. And then other aspects. The whole influencer thing just literally makes my head explode.

Yes. So final words of wisdom. What would you like to share? You shared some great, great pieces. And what would you like to leave the audience with?

Never give up. And no matter how common a symptom may be, it is never normal. It is always your body's check engine light coming on to say, hey, there's something going on in here. So instead of grabbing the Tums or the, you know, Tylenol or whatever and putting a piece of tape over that check engine light, start digging deeper. Because like that check engine light with your car, if you ignore it for so long, something that could have been little and easy to fix turns into a great big problem. And it's very expensive to fix. Our bodies are no different. So start paying attention. That headache that you're living with, the joint pain, the bloating, the, you know, moodiness, the reactiveness, none of that. None of that is normal, even though it may be common. So don't, you know, don't. Don't dismiss it. Start digging deeper and start looking for the truth. Yeah.

And I just would like to add on that. That's brilliant. And I would just add that, you know, our bodies are communicating. And I think we've come from a generation where we've lost that connection because of the mindset. Right. Oh, I have a pain, I take a pill, it goes away. So we kind of shut down the signal.

We've.

We've somehow gotten under the hood, turned off the check engine light, but it's still there. Right. The issue's still there. And so it's so important to begin, I think, building that relationship with our bodies so that when a symptom shows up that we really pay attention to it and listen to it, it is telling us something. So digging deeper, trying to understand what's actually going on, and then we become our own advocates. Right. As we come down and working with practitioners like Heather and others who have been down this path, have gotten the training and can support you as part of your healing journey.

Absolutely. Can I get an amen?

Yes. Well, thank you so much for your time and your energy and your wisdom. I love your story. I actually didn't know all about you. I didn't know you weren't pooping at age four. So that's amazing. And I don't. I don't think it's that uncommon either. It's really not because of our diets.

Right.

In our lifestyle. So it's really helpful, and I hope this really helps the audience start to uncover their own personal journey. So thank you so much, and I look forward to seeing you at the next conference.

Yeah, absolutely. Sam.