029 How to Heal from Lyme Disease Katina Makiris

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What is asked of us is overwhelming, and I've talked to people that have gone through cancer and Lyme, and they say that fighting the Lyme is harder because at least with cancer, they've got, you know, support groups, and there's more conversation going on with, you know, people in the hospital and nurses, etc., like kind of understanding it.

Right.

Congratulations, Lyme Fighter! Today you had the courage to open your eyes and face another day. Welcome to Lyme Voice. This show's purpose is to help you put the puzzle pieces of Lyme into place. Each episode is designed to inspire, educate, and encourage you on your Lyme journey to wellness. Together we will fight. Together we will heal. Together we will live. Here are your hosts, Aaron and Sarah Sanchez.

Welcome everybody to Lime Voice. So glad you made it back to our second episode of what is turning out to be an awesome, awesome interview. It was so good we actually ended up breaking it up into 3 episodes. This second part I know you guys are really going to enjoy. She makes some awesome points on how to function how to live with Lyme. We really drew a lot of inspiration from this. I know you guys will too. And, you know, one of the reasons we wanted to break it up is so that you could really focus in on what is being said. We had such a great time with her and there was so much information, we didn't want it to lose its value in its mass. So I hope you guys enjoy this episode and, uh, we'll see you next week for episode 3 of this in-depth interview with Katina Makris as she discusses her book, Autoimmune Illness and Lyme Disease Recovery Guide: Mending the Body, Mind, and Spirit. That can be found right on the show notes. You can buy that directly off of our website through Amazon, and LymeVoice will get a small portion of the proceeds. So it's another way that you can support LymeVoice and get an awesome product. Hi guys, I want to tell you about Audible. I love Audible. Sarah loves Audible. I know you guys are going to love it as well. It has been such a huge resource for us. We have an offer at lionvoice.com where you can actually get your first month free. This is a great way to grab one of those books that you've been meaning to read and be able to do it on the go, in your commute, while you're doing your chores, or if you just don't have the strength to hold up the book that day. This is a great way to be able to utilize the information that is so vital for your health and recovery. Go to lionvoice.com, get your free Audible download, and help support Lion Voice. Thank you guys so much, we really appreciate it.

This illness asks us to turn very deep inside of ourselves. And I say it's like being on a forced spiritual retreat or being in a forced ashram. You are dying, literally. I felt like I was physically dying, but it is a spiritual death and it asks for personal transformation. And those times alone and in solitude and in reverence and in contemplation I think you start to examine a lot of what is your purpose in life and what is your contribution. And to tell you the truth, in those times, like that passage that you just read, I felt the only thing that I could contribute in life at that point was love. It was the only thing I still knew how to do, was to love. And so I loved my children and I loved my husband, and I learned that I needed to love myself because to get well, you have to be an advocate for your own self and you have to come to value and treasure what are your gifts and what are you bringing to this lifetime. And a lot of our society is set up so that we love others or we love our jobs or we love things or pets or objects or fancy cars or trips, and they're all beautiful and wonderful, and I don't want to take away from them, but this illness has come at an interesting time in our history, I think, of our culture. And I learned, as I said, that all I knew how to contribute was love, and love is what helped me move through this illness and, and to in turn finally recover. And now that's what I bring to the world, is my love.

Hmm, that's really beautiful. Thank you for that. I, from an outside perspective, I really like the way you describe the pulls on your personality. And for me as the husband on the, on the outside, to watch parts of her personality get stripped away was really hard. And I can see the— how so many other husbands could be so fearful of that. And, you know, even— and I could see why there would be issues in your marriage when it's not the same person that you married, right? But I am also here on this side to say that the new person that comes out of that is worth waiting for.

Oh, bless you, Aaron. Thank you for saying that. You are a very wise man, and a very patient man to understand that. Yeah. Yeah, you do.

You have to fit so much of your life in these little tiny windows.

And I think even for you Lyme patients out there, you have to be patient and wait for it as well.

Yeah.

I mean, you all— we, we all want to be better today, not tomorrow. Today we feel horrible. This is horrible. We need— but You have to give— I think I had to tell you, Sarah, it's okay for you to be sick today.

Right.

To give yourself permission to build your way out of that.

Well, and Katina, this would probably resonate with you. When, as I've been able to do more things, you know, I was kind of in this panic. So many years had gone by, I wanted to do everything. And now I'm kind of coming to this place where I can say, oh no, you know what? I just need to rest today. Why don't you go ahead? But that's because I know it's easy to say, to kind of opt out of something when you know you're going to come right back. When you're in that mode where you haven't been connected with people for months and months and months and you have an opportunity, you feel like you have to take it because it could be another year.

Exactly. And, you know, I have to say, you know, like we were just saying, oh my gosh, I just have a little window today, but 20 minutes or an hour, or sometimes you don't get a window for a couple of weeks, you might be Really, you might be down on that sofa or bed. You know what? This illness asks for deep, deep rest. And I can remember my integrative medicine doc when we got the diagnosis out of the clinical nutritionist when he ran the lab at Igenex and he also ran it at another lab called Bowen Labs, which is not around right now, but when we got my double, both positives, He said to me, "Katina," he said, "You need to remain on another year of bed rest." And I was like, "What? Bed rest? I've already been in bed for 2 years." He says, "No, no, no." He says, "Now that I'm looking at your blood test," because he saw those specialty labs that the nutritionist had run, he said, "Your nervous system is so fragile." He said, "If we still had rest sanatoriums of 50, 60 years ago, He said, "I would put you in there right now." He says, "You can't handle any stimulation. No action movies, no TV news, no grocery stores, no entertaining, no fluorescent lights." He says, "You can't have any, any stimulation. Your nervous system is so fragile." He says, "I just want you to stay at the level of your little 8-year-old. Disney movies, lighthearted comedies, picture books." Very, very deep rest is needed, and that is a very important statement I need to make because we do try to push. You know what I mean? We do try to make it to the grocery store, or we do try to push ourselves, and we have to ask for help, and it's hard because a lot of us don't have extended families around us the way we did in generations past. Having a husband like Aaron, or I had to ask friends and we'd kind of like put together a little helper tree.

Yeah.

Like, "Could someone come do laundry once a week?" or "Could someone make a run to the grocery store for me or get me to a doctor's appointment?" because the pushing is not going to help you. You have to rest.

I think that is just another part of American culture, just like we were talking about the food and the influences that that chemicals and GMO have into our food, our American pace is also just as bad for us as a lot of those foods. Not being willing to rest is so important.

It's so true, and you know, the worst of the epidemic is in the northern tier of the hemisphere of the world. The worst of the epidemic is like, you know, on the northern band of the United States from like the Pacific Northwest across the Great Lakes, across New England, across northern Ireland and Canada too, and then across into the Scandinavian countries and then the northern parts of Europe. I mean, these are all high-achieving cultures, right? Right.

Interesting.

Also, vitamin D levels are reduced at that level, at that latitudes too. I mean, we're also seeing a bad outbreak in Canada— I mean, in Australia, which again, you know, here we— so there's some pieces to think about, like you just said, Aaron, about the rest. The different cultures of the world, like you look at the Mediterranean or Latin America, I mean, they move at a different pace and they take their long lunches or their siestas and they also have a lot more vitamin D, which supports immune function. There's a lot of pieces that tie in here. Dr. Klinghardt, who I interviewed a couple of times on Limelight Radio, he's a very amazing mind that thinks in in multiple directions. He has an interesting point that I think has some validity to it. He says that one of the reasons he thinks the epidemic is exploding in the past 10, 15 years is the whole electromagnetic frequency fields.

Yeah, I've heard that.

Yep, it's a vibration that our body is not naturally attuned to. Our body vibrations are supposed to be at a low vibrational rate akin to the earth energy vibrations, which is like farmers and people that like live close to the land, you know, they, they have a different pace and they, they're attuned to the earth energy vibrations. But you get into this whole electromagnetic techie stuff. I know we can't see them, but our body is exposed to them and, and he believes it's affecting the nervous system and our immune function and the endocrine system. And, and I kind of am Starting to think he's onto something there. Hmm.

I think you're right.

Yeah.

You know, I was just thinking on what you were saying about having your friends come and kind of put together like a helping tree. And it is. There are so many facets to the illness. There are so many stumbling blocks, like even you just being able to articulate what you need help with. You know, that's a challenge in and of itself when you're not feeling good. I think one of the things for me that I felt, as you know, I had like really several years where I was mostly in bed and I would just get out of bed for special events type thing, because that was all I was capable of, right? I felt like I had been saying the same thing for so many years at that point, like, oh, I'm really not feeling good, that I almost didn't— I didn't think anyone was gonna believe me anymore. 'Cause how can you not feel good every January 1st for 5 years in a row?

I know, but you've got this raging infection in there, right? And maybe multiple infections, and it's 4 times stronger than syphilis, Lyme disease. So once it gets into the spinal fluid and it hits the brain, I mean, oh my God. I mean, look at— it took them like 300 years, I think, to finally be able to address syphilis because they were using mercury and all kinds of things before they found an antibiotic to work with it. Lyme's— you got a raging infection in there. I mean, your body is working so hard. I mean, this is a blood-borne disease initially, but then it moves into the tissues and into the organs and it sets up camp. It loves, by the way, it loves Borrelia loves the fatty acids of the body. It loves fats. It finds the fascia of the muscles. There's fatty layer in there, so that's why so many people have fibromyalgia symptoms, or it'll get into the synovial lining of the joints where there's fatty acids and corrode the joints away because it's eating those fatty acids, or it gets onto the myelin sheaths that line the nerves. And the brain and it starts to eat those fatty acids, so then you get demyelinization, which looks like MS on a CAT scan or an MRI or a PET scan. Yeah. Or it's the cardiac lining of your heart and it eats the fatty acids on the pericardium, so then you get pericarditis. And so, you know, you've got a serious, serious infection going on and this— your body's working so hard, is so exhausted trying to deal with the infection, and then you get these depletions. If you don't have enough magnesium, You know, you don't have enough B vitamins, and then the other big player is the mitochondria, which a lot of you might remember from biology class. Mitochondria create fuel. Do you remember the Krebs cycle? ATP? So the mitochondria take the glucose from your bloodstream, right? So you eat your food and it gets digested and it turns into glucose. And then glucose gets used by the mitochondria and the Krebs cycle runs and it creates ATP, which is fuel. So the poor mitochondria, they're not able to get the nutrients they need. They can't get all the manganese and zinc and the other minerals to run the Krebs cycle. So the majority of us end up with chronic fatigue syndrome because our mitochondria— we have mitochondria dysregulation. One of the supplements that basically saved my life was Mitochondria ATP from Pure Encapsulations. I have to give a plug to Pure Encapsulations. I adore that company. They're like the Clinique of vitamins. They have no colors or fillers. When you think about these pieces, which is my new book, as I said, Autoimmune Illness and Lyme Disease Recovery Guide. It spells it all out why you are feeling so crummy like 5 New Year's that you can't go to or me, I couldn't go to the Little League baseball games for years or poetry reading. You're not imagining it. Your poor body, it's not able to make fuel. It's fighting raging infection. It's depleted with essential nutrients and I mean, I just marvel all the time that people with this illness are just— they're even making it. I mean, you're hanging on by a thread and I mean the suicide rates are astronomical but oh my God, I mean the amount of burden that people with Lyme, chronic Lyme, you know, anything that's, you know, anything beyond a year plus, I mean this is a test in fortitude, endurance, you know, willpower. Faith. It's just— it's what is asked of us is overwhelming. And I've talked to people that have gone through cancer and Lyme, and they say that fighting the Lyme is harder because at least with cancer they've got, you know, support groups and there's more conversation going on with, you know, people in the hospital and nurses, etc., like kind of understanding it. Right. Not that we have great cures for cancer. I mean, there's some cures, but it's— it's—

it—

this is— Lyme is just—

Well, people don't tell people with cancer. I mean, I was just talking with a physician and he should have known better, but he said, oh, you don't look like you've had Lyme. And I thought, you know, they don't tell people who have cancer, oh, you don't look like you have cancer. And I told him, first of all, I was trying not to be angry, but then I said, I said, yeah, you know what? That's a blessing and a curse. And that's part of the reason why it took me so many years to get diagnosed is because I look fine.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah. People don't— people with cancer get the decency of a diagnosis and some comprehension of understanding and are really— it's any chronic illness, anything that goes on long term.

Yeah. Which brings up the whole autoimmune situation. Which is a crossover. Dr. Horowitz and I are both in concurrence on this, and some of the other big doctors in the Lyme community recognize that a lot of this explosion of 50 million Americans and 250 individuals around the world are suffering with autoimmune conditions, which means your body's immune system has so-called turned on itself so that normal cells like normal thyroid cells, the body is interpreting as foreign and it goes and attacks your thyroid, so you'll get Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Or it thinks that the lining of the digestive tract has got something dangerous in those cells, so it turns on it and it creates irritable bowel syndrome or colitis. What we're looking at really is chronic inflammation, which we know the Lyme organisms— Borrelia, Bartonella, etc.— create inflammation in the body. And then the immune system, you know, sees inflammation and it uses its various mechanisms in its immune function. And as I said, with the adrenal glands and it creates what we call cytokines. I don't want to get too crazy technical here, but cytokine storms erupt and that's when we get these so-called flares, you know, that we talk about, the Lyme flares, which are these big painful, you know, inflammatory states and, you know, brain fog, etc. And Dr. John Aucott, A-U-C-O-T-T, at Johns Hopkins, he's really one of the masterminds right now putting together the whole connect the dots with the cytokine storms. And I do hope that there's some breakthrough work. They're working in Europe on it too. Belgium in particular has got some great studies going on. So, you know, we— the autoimmune relay gets triggered. Lyme can be one of the underlying root causes of the autoimmune syndromes besides the toxins we mentioned, right? Like the mercury and the, you know, other, other elements and the depletions that we mentioned, a lot of, you know, different endocrine depletions. But a lot of these autoimmune syndromes, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome in particular— there's one study, Dr. Sam Shore in the Washington, D.C. area is a chronic fatigue specialist out of I think it was 200 patients he studied of his, all but one tested positive for Lyme bacteria. And I mean, these were 10-year-old and 15-year-old cases. So there's a lot of connect the dots. I just— I really hope I see in our lifetime. I hope I see that the connect the dots come through so that we don't have to have all of these MS cases and Parkinson's cases and Dr. Alan MacDonald, who, you know, we all love so dearly— we saw him in Under Our Skin. Yes, he's a really prominent pathologist. His initial work out of the, uh, Southampton Hospital on Long Island— he actually was working with Dr. Berluscano and Dr. Berg DeFerry himself back in the '70s and '80s before the CDC and Infectious Disease Society put such a chokehold on the Lyme disease situation when they were still kind of trying to understand this out, he was getting pathological samplings from, you know, all over these Long Island offices and clinics, etc., from pediatrics and rheumatology and neurology, etc. Dr. MacDonald was able to discover that 7 out of 10 Alzheimer's patients have Lyme spirochetes in their brain. And his new study shows that 90% of MS people have Lyme spirochetes in their spinal fluid, and he can't get the funding from the American government or medical system to continue his work, which for me is heartbreaking. I mean, holy cow, I mean, we could put it together here. ALS is another one he's got the research in on, so he's working with Norway now. Because Norway's got such huge MS rates. And he's— his, his site, I think it's Lyme-pathology.com, is looking for MS patients free of charge to donate their blood or whatever else he needs for sampling so that they can continue the studies. But oh my gosh, if we could connect the dots and if we find out that tick-borne diseases are a big player, even if it's 50% of a player in these cases, I mean, gosh, people could get well. They don't have to be forever on MS medications or on Ambrell or on— in wheelchairs or dementia. I mean, I had dementia and it's gone. Believe me, if I could write 2 books, it's gone, right?

Yeah.

Okay, Catina, so that brings us to a perfect spot. Where the complexities of the body are unending and the solutions. But the mind, like you talked about, the dementia, the not being able to articulate, like all these factors that go in. I want to read another quote as we start talking about healing the mind, um, from your book. And you said, you're talking about coming out of a bad cycle, A week later, I noticed the magic beginning. My head starts to clear, my mood improve, and slowly, with baby steps, I'm moving off the sofa. Once again, I feel optimistic that I'm rounding the corner, beating back the relentless virus. Up and down the hurdles of collapsing and rebuilding I go. Physically renewed, I pick up my brushes and begin to paint with a refined— with a refound passion. But despite Despite all this, I know that a massive hemorrhage has erupted in my marriage. And I think one of the hardest parts mentally is that you are literally juggling so many things. You're not just a mom and a wife. You don't just have a career. You are trying to become a PhD to save yourself. You cannot think straight. You have a horrible short-term memory. It's a wonder that people survive at all.

Oh, oh, definitely. I think you've heard this before, that of all the chronic illnesses, Lyme disease has the highest suicide rates. And I think a big piece of it is that you actually do feel like you're going insane. Oh yeah, I, you know, I'm a smart woman. I am. I had a great private school education. I went to Duke University. I was gonna become a medical physician, but I became a homeopathic practitioner. I have very keen memory, one of those types that, you know what I mean, could remember verbatim a conversation. I never would have to make a list. I could, you know, I could never have to put an appointment in my calendar. Like, I could remember an appointment from like 3 weeks out, you know. And then Lyme disease moved in, and I would be standing there in my kitchen looking at my refrigerator and I couldn't think of the word for watermelon. I could not make a grocery list. I had faltering speech like that, you know what I mean? Like stuttering, faltering speech. I could not remember names of people that I was friendly with. I mean, the dementia symptoms were there and my thinking process, I couldn't read. I couldn't read for 2 years. I couldn't tell you a lot of the movies that I saw during that time. I have no recall of movies of the times that I was sick. People, recent friends said, "Oh, remember when we saw such and such? We watched it." And I'm like, "I have no recall of it." So yeah, you feel you're going insane and then I had some of those OCD-type symptoms where I just totally lock into perseverating negative freaky thought, which scared me to death at the time. And then that gets you even more scared. And, you know, I had terrible anxiety. I don't know if you suffered with it, Sarah, but anxiety that was beyond like, oh, I'm afraid to go to the dentist and get my teeth drilled, like not that kind of anxious feeling. This kind of anxiety that would start in my belly and then rise up into my heart and then it would grab onto my mind and it would lock in so bad and I'd get so, so panicky that I'd be hyperventilating. And ridiculous, like I'm watching a Disney film or I'm in the bathtub or I'm dead asleep and it wakes me up.

Yeah, I had that. I would be dead asleep and I'd wake up in a full panic.

And you don't know what's going on, so then that makes it even more scary. So you think you're going insane, your mind's not working, and, um, it's frightening. And as Aaron said, you know, family members are terrified for you because they think they're losing you. They think, oh my gosh, is my wife or my mom or my sister Is she gonna have to be in the hospital or is she gonna have to be in the psych ward? Is, you know, are we gonna lose her? Is she dying? I mean, you know, all these thoughts are valid. I, you know, I can't say enough that when this illness hits the nervous system, it's very real what's going on. And the mind, however, my father, I have to give him all the credit in the world. I would I know I was at death's door 2 times. I almost died 2 times. And one of the, the second one, I really didn't think I was going to make it. And I was crying on the phone to him, and he's like, sweetheart, you need to use your will and you need to use your mind. You were born with a mind, and God gave you a great gift, and that gift is willpower. He said, "You have to use your mind and you have to use it for your own sake. I don't care if the doctors don't have any tools for you." He says, "They left me for dead in the Philippines. How many times did they tell me I was going to die and I pulled through because I used my mind." He said, "You have to use your mind." He says, "Now see yourself in a place that you loved." We picked a place, a beautiful beach in the Bahamas that I loved. He said, "Okay, tell me what you are doing." We described it and the water and blah, blah, blah. He talked me through it and he says, "Okay, now how do you feel?" I said, "Well, it's beautiful there. I love it. I wish I was there." He goes, "Well, you are there." He said, "You're there in your mind's eye." He says, "Right now you are making positive brain chemicals." He says, "You're only going to get well by using your mind and making your mind work for you and you've got to make those positive brain chemicals." and you've got to be positive, think positive, and visit that place in that Bahama island 3, 4, 5 times a day, and I want you to go there. He says, that's how you're going to get well. And so my dad, he was in his 80s at the time, he started teaching me how to use that mind-body healing pathway, which we now know, you know, in epigenetic medicine is our mind is capable of making positive neurotransmitters, serotonin and dopamine, and positive imagery, visualizations, affirmations, meditations, prayer. These are ancient tools that work. And when I finally did get to a spiritual healer who helped me refine it even more, I know it was a huge, huge turning point for me, was learning to use my mind in the right way because Lyme, the bacteria itself, the vibration of that organism, I've tasted it, felt it, smelt it, lived it. You have too, Sarah. It's decimating. It's ugly. It's negative. It's critical. It's despairing. It makes you want to give up. That vibration takes over our own. It takes away— it took away my carefree, happy, playful personality. I'm like, if you met me in real life, people always comment on, oh my God, you're like, I'm like my friend immediately. Like, I love you. Like, I want to hug you. Like, I have a very warm, playful spirit. And when I was sick, it was not there because Borrelia set up camp and Borrelia's vibration took over mine. And so I bring this message to those that are listening and those who read my book or those that come to my workshops. One of the pieces I strongly teach is how do we reframe our thinking and our thought patterns and how do we use our mind to replace Borrelia's patterns and restore our own and rebirth, as Aaron said, something even more beautiful, more creative, and more far-reaching than who we even thought we were before.

Yeah, I think the, you know, another one of the hard realities is that this process of healing your mind, I think, really can't begin until your symptoms are under control. And for me, like, once I was out of pain, then I was able to kind of process through things. And start kind of comprehending the losses. But I felt like I'd already fought so hard and I'd already gone through so many years and then 2 years of treatment and then, oh my gosh, I'm still not better. Not all the way. It's daunting because I'm like, man, I already gave a lot of my fight to get to this point.

I know.

Ah!

I know. But you know what? Wellspring inside of us at the level of spirit is never-ending. This is where meditation and prayer really come in so strongly because I am now trained as a certified intuitive and spiritual healer. I did go through the whole training program and certification process, and I have to say that meditation is an act of receiving, we learn how to let go of thinking and push thoughts out of our mind. To just clear it, just follow your breath, just stay attuned. You just put your mind's eye on your breathing. It's a very simple way to start meditation. When we can just get into that kind of state of being, we're just being there, we're being still, we're being just present with ourselves, we engage the parasympathetic side of the nervous system, which is the relaxing side. It's not the fight-or-flight side of the sympathetic. So when we start to learn how to just be and to sort of be in stillness and to be in that meditative state, what starts to happen over time is you actually start to receive. And what you receive is pearls of wisdom or what I call divine guidance. These messages drop down, these ahas come in. Or what I would do is I would just pick up a journal after my 10 minutes of meditation or 30 minutes and I would just write. I don't even know what I was going to write. Some of it was random, some of it was like a pearl like we just said, an aha. Some of it was me releasing an emotion. But it really starts to work. And then the other, you know, the other piece of it is prayer. And prayer is ancient, and it goes back to like every culture and every religion. And prayer, when you use prayer, are able to sit with yourself and just ask for guidance or protection or direction. Or a healer or something for love, just that simple act of asking for something of higher good, you're drawing down from above, from a higher— you know what I mean? The higher dimensions, from the God plane. Yeah, you're drawing down really good energy. So, you know, we can start to use these inner resources that we bear at the level of spirit that are endless. Prayer and meditation and self-affirmations, positive statements like, "I am strong. I am healthy. I am resilient. I am creative. I am 100% well." I mean, positive affirmation statements. These are energy forms that do a world of good. And I know, I hear you, Sarah. I mean, fighting the battle at the physical level and the doctors and the drugs and the pills and the procedures and the— oh my God, the 67 supplements and, you know, 3, 4, 5 times a day and between foods or with foods or not with foods or at bedtime. I mean, it gets crazy. It does. It gets crazy. But then when you can embrace the state of Stillness. And I really, I love to teach this in my workshop. It's one of my favorite pieces, is this module of helping people create their own little inner temple. I call it their inner Eden. This is really powerful healing work when you can work on the inside, learning to work on the inside and to tap into these inner powers is— this for me was, and still to this day I believe is what keeps me healthy, is maintaining those inner riches.

Katina, you have a number of projects you're working on currently. Tell us about your new radio show and bringing your healing workshops to people all over the world.

Oh yes, thank you, Aaron. Yeah, you know, a lot of creativity is still flowing through me in great abundance. So a new radio show in the making with Genesis Communication Network is going to be launched probably in the spring of 2016. It's going to be Healing with Katina, and we're going to be visiting with all kinds of specialists regarding healing and natural medicine and integrative medicine so that chronic illness does not have to be present in everybody's lives. So stay tuned for that. And I've got 2 beautiful manuscripts in the making that will be following up my latest release, Autoimmune Illness and Lyme Disease Recovery Guide. I've got 2 books of spiritual teachings They're lovely. They were basically given to me during my times of meditation, great pearls of insight. One is called In the Cathedral of Winter, messages delivered to me one beautiful winter, layered with gorgeous photography. And another book coming called Life Lessons, which are, again, spiritual gifts. Given to me in my meditations, kind of akin to some of the works of Pema Chödrön and the like. I love them. They're lovely. And of great far-reaching merit that I think a lot of people will enjoy are workshops that I'll be co-teaching Some are Lyme disease specific. Living Well with Lyme Disease will be at Omega Institute June 17th and 19th, through 19th. And also I'll be teaching with Dr. Edie Restow, who's a wonderful naturopath from the West Coast. We'll be teaching at the Feather Pipe Ranch in Montana last week of May, first week of June. Lyme Disease Detox and Renewal, which is fantastic. We will be cleansing the body and also then using bio-meridian testing and other methodologies to find out where your depletions are and specifically tailor-make nutritional diet and supplementation program with homeopathics and nutritionals and herbals for each person. So you come home with a whole protocol that is tailored just to you. Hmm. And yeah, really exciting. Wow. Probably also be hosting it in the fall in a New England location. So it'll be those 3 great Lyme disease-specific workshops. And then with a brilliant colleague of mine, Suzanne Kingsbury, we are leading also at Omega Institute, June 19th to 21st, Inner Eden: Reclaiming Your Inner Healer. This is a 5-day workshop where we will be working on the inner healer that I I have spoken about today in the interview. I will be teaching you how to ignite the mind-body healing pathway. And Suzanne, who is a gifted writer, has a method called the Gateless Writing Technique. So we will be working on the inside, both through meditation and guided visualization and writing, how to empower your inner healer to bring forth your strongest immune function and healing ability. It's patented work. It's really profound, and we'll be bringing that workshop, the Inner Eden Workshop, around the country and around the world. Actually, we'll be bringing it to the West Coast and also up to Canada and over to Europe. And lastly, a conference along the same idea of the Omega Workshop, Living Well with Lyme Disease, I'll be bringing to Canada, to Toronto, in the fall. So that will be with Lyme Ontario. So keep tuned to my webpage, which is katina-macris.com. My schedule will be up there, the workshops will be there, and there's also the Ticked Off Music Festivals, which I can't not mention. Wonderful philanthropic events that we host all around the country. We've got Ticked Off Hawaii, January 23rd in Honolulu. We've got Ticked Off San Francisco October 8th. We've got Ticked Off Toronto, which is actually going to be in June of 2017. We bring together absolutely stunning speakers and great musical acts. Music is a great—

awesome.

So yeah, raising for Lyme disease. We've got a great patient fund to help people get financial support for their treatments through the scholarship program of the Ticked Off Music Festival. So Google tickedoffmusicfest.com and come to the festivals. They're dynamite. They're a great feel-good day. We've got music, we've got educators, we've got all kinds of wonderful things. So I'm involved in a lot of projects. Yeah, you are. I hope to see you out on the road with me at any of the workshops. And of course, visit my website for more information, katinaMacris.com. Thank you. And thank you.

Thank you. I didn't know about those Ticked Off music festivals. That sounds awesome.

Dynamite, you should interview Greg Kirk. Okay, Greg K-I-R-K, about the music festivals. He's the founder of them, and I'm a co-director. They're really dynamite. Awesome. We've done 5 now. We've got— we get big names at them too, like Les Stroud, Survivor Man, um, and we get big acts.

Cool.

Really? Yeah, they're really dynamite.

Yeah, I, I will contact him. We'd love to start showing up at some of those things.

Yes, you would love it. You should show up with them. Yeah, the San Francisco one you should put on the calendar, October 8th.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, if they ever need a small podcaster to play a kazoo or something up on stage, yeah, right, let me know.

Right, I know. So, well, thank you guys. Thank you. It was a beautiful time with you. I know we covered a lot of ground. I'm, I'm hoping we'll help a lot.

Disease is contrary to life. Therefore, wherever disease exists, life must also fight to exist.

Good job fighting, Lyme fighters! Keep it up. We'll see you next time. LymeVoice contains general information about medical conditions and treatments. The information is not advice and should not be treated as such. Okay, Lincoln?

Okay.

The medical information Information on LionVoice is provided as is without any representations, warranties, expressed or implied. Okay?

Okay.

LionVoice makes no representations or warranties in relation to the medical information on this podcast. You must not rely on the information on this podcast as an alternative to medical advice from your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. If you have any specific questions about your medical matter, you you should consult your doctor or other professional healthcare provider. And for you, you consult your parents, 'kay?

'Kay.

If you think you may be suffering from any medical condition, you should seek immediate medical attention. You should never delay seeking medical advice, disregard medical advice, or discontinue medical treatment because of information on this podcast. Got it, Lincoln?

Got it.

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