Balancing Emotions Balances Your Body

Eva Detko, PhD

Thank you, Robby. And thank you for this lovely introduction. I really appreciate you. I appreciate you inviting me and giving me an opportunity to share everything that I can share in that short period of time that we have together that will hopefully help a lot of people.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

So for people that don’t know where are you today? Where in the world is Eva Detko, PhD? Where are you located today?

Eva Detko, PhD

Currently, I’m in the Southeast of Poland.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Okay. Wow. So that’s a different time zone, a different country and certainly you have a different kind of headset in the way that you view the world, the way that you approach healthcare. And today we’re gonna dive pretty deep into the emotional part of healthcare that is so important. And even in clinic and in our own health clinic and coaching service, what we’ve noticed over the years, and we’ve been at it for more than 25 years, is that you really don’t completely heal unless you deal with the emotional side of whatever is your challenge. And so we can kind of deal with the biology, and the physiology and the basics of getting your body back online, but what about your emotional side? And it’s often forgotten. And we hear about mind, body integration, but what about the mind? What about the emotional piece? And that’s why I’m so excited to have you on today because particularly the Lyme community that’s tuning into this summit, they don’t truly, many don’t appreciate the family dynamic that affects your emotions. 

And then how about the emotional process that you’re going through, you know, harboring a chronic element, being told by doctors that “You’re crazy, you don’t have anything wrong with you. Chronic Lyme doesn’t even exist.” We’ve heard so many variations of that. That unfortunately it kind of turns my stomach a little bit when I think about it, because it is real, and the pain is real, and the process is real and the emotional effects or the effects of the challenge are real. So with that, could you give us a little backdrop on kind of like how you decided to even be focusing on emotional healing? Maybe some of your backdrop on your story moving forward, and then what you focused on today.

Eva Detko, PhD

Yes. Thank you. I suppose I’m not really unique in that respect. A lot of people in this community doing great work have come into this work because of their own personal experiences. And that certainly is my story. Actually, I have expertise in physiological science and even in sports science, to be honest, and nutritional science. And like you just said, at some point in my career, I realized that actually, unless you address the psycho energetic pieces, you are going nowhere fast. You’re not going to achieve . So it’s not to say that you’re not gonna heal at all, but you’re not gonna achieve the levels of healing that you can achieve if you address these pieces. And absolutely, personally, I don’t know anybody, I haven’t met anybody who would have long-term health struggles of any kind, I really don’t care what the label is, that would have no sort of issues at the psycho energetic levels. 

Those layers are always there. It’s always a piece of somebody’s health puzzle. It’s just a question of how big the piece is. It can be smaller, it can be bigger, but it’s always a piece that is certainly my experience, and I have been doing this for quite a long time. As you said, I was launched into the emotional work. It’s almost like I was catapulted into it, straight from my mother’s womb. And even, to be honest, even before I was born, because my mother had a very traumatic pregnancy. Her sister died, apologies for people who already heard the story, but it was an interesting story in that my mother went into a complete shock after her sister died when she was three months pregnant with me. Basically her sister died as a result of a vaccine injury. And she died in horrible suffering, actually, it’s not even worth mentioning, to be honest, how bad it was. 

And the whole family, understandably, got pretty traumatized. And this was, don’t forget, over four decades ago, almost five decades ago. Still, there was no support for people. People were just expected to get on with it. Okay, so you had a trauma, so somebody died, you know, just get on with it. And so it’s not that simple, as we know. Even as you said, having a diagnosis, having an illness, that in itself is a trauma. And then we have all of those emotional layers, all of often unresolved, emotional layers, all of those unresolved traumas that people accumulate over their lifetimes, that then contribute to the weakening of the system. So these days deal with this logical side, but really focus more on the psycho energetic side. That’s really my passion. 

That’s my specialty area. So when I’m talking about the psycho-emotional, obviously that’s to do with the mind and the emotions. But I also look at how well somebody’s biofield, how well somebody’s energy field is balanced because we are one system, we are energy. All of those pieces are part of one coherent whole. And we cannot go on separating those, which of course is what happens when we’re looking at Rockefeller medicine. It’s just pharmacology, it’s not even medicine. It’s nothing to do with healing. Conventional medicine, let’s face it, it’s not actually anything to do with healing. it’s just, you know, treating symptoms. We know that. 

But even in some other approaches that are maybe more natural people still don’t really fully appreciate the mind, body, spirit connection, the energy connection, everything comes together. It’s like the emotional piece is particularly interesting because it overlaps. For instance, we can have a disruption to our energy field and we can have an emotional response that is directly related to that. We can also, of course, have a physiological issue like for instance, maybe we have EMF exposure or chemical toxicity, and we can also have emotional issues because of that. 

But obviously a lot of it is really to do with nervous system issues because when you overstimulate one part of the immune system all the time, because you had your trauma as a child, maybe exposure to stress as a child, and then that trauma is encoded neurologically, and then so therefore you get triggered every time you have situation where your system, your brain is remotely reminded of that original trauma. You’re gonna get triggered. You’re gonna stimulate this neurochemical cascade. And because of that, you’re going to end up stimulating your fight or flight or freeze response. So those survival states that obviously are important and we need them, but if you end up overstimulating them and just training that side of the immune system a little bit too much that so strong, so responsive that it almost activate too readily now. 

And we have the situation where we end up with this complete dysfunction within the nervous system, this complete imbalance. And a lot of it, that’s really one of the predominant key causes of chronic illness. And that’s because a lot of it actually goes back to childhood, like it was in my case, like it was in a lot of people’s cases. Because trauma doesn’t have to necessarily mean death, or divorce or something really huge. And I do wanna stress that trauma is determined internally, it’s to do with how you respond to an event. So there is something obviously happening, must be , that event must have meaning. And as well as that, we need to perceive that situation as inescapable and a neurological landscape needs to be permissive for that trauma to be encoded. So there are those different sort of boxes that we need to tick for the trauma to be encoded. 

But it’s really essentially it’s down to us how we interpret what’s going on around us. perhaps, or we don’t perceive the environment around us, the environment we are in is safe for us to be who we need to be to express ourselves the way we need to express ourselves. Literally, just that section of lack of safety, even in those sort of small ways. Just not being able to express yourself emotionally, because maybe it’s not okay for you to express anger because your parents think it’s not cool, and nice children don’t get angry or something like that. That literally is enough. That’s enough to traumatize a child. You don’t have to have parents who are psychopaths, or sociopaths or narcissists. That’s not essential for somebody to have a lot of emotional unresolved trauma from childhood. 

So that’s very important to understand because that sets the stage for the physiological biological changes. So I really encourage people to ask themselves why is it that so many people have latent infections. And obviously we’re talking specifically about Lyme here. But I’m talking in general, latent infections. We know a lot of people have them. Most people have something. They will either have a parasitic infection or latent herpes, or this and that. And obviously we’re talking here about Lyme and co-infections. And that’s also very common. But I can tell you that I work with bioresonance technology and I’ve got those fancy bioresonance devices that can actually, when you scan somebody’s field, it can actually tell you what infections this person may or may not have. So it will pick up. 

The way it does that is because all of those pathogens have specific frequencies at which they operate. So they’re known frequency. So that’s how those devices pick up on that. And I have scanned and seen many, many people over the years who have latent, well, either Borrelia, Babesia, Bartonella, they have that in the system, but they have no symptoms, they thrive. They’re thriving individuals. There is no issue. They’re not bedridden. They’re not suffering from chronic fatigue. They’re not suffering from pain. So what’s interesting to me is that there is that infection there’s some way in the system, but the system still has enough resilience in it, and enough strategies, enough, because obviously we have a lot of, you know, coping mechanisms in the body, and this person is not displaying symptoms. 

However, could this turn around for them for the worst at any moment? Well, let’s say they have EMF exposure or chemical toxicity of some sort, let’s say they go and have the mercury fillings removed and suddenly they have massive amount of mercury coming into the system or something like that. Or they have an emotional trauma. Could that latent infection then knock them off the feet? Absolutely. And often that is how it happens for people. So the body, and the whole system, it’s not just the body, it’s the whole system, the mind, body, the energy field. Everything compensates, compensates, compensate until the moment comes where wheels fall off, right?

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Okay. All right. I got to stop you because you’ve just said so many important things. I’m not even sure, like I’m trying to catch my breath, just thinking about all the things I wanna say right now. Okay, so first off, what you described, for people that are just tuning in, what you described is why, like, you and I can be experiencing an event in the same room. Your body and your psyche might interpret that as a trauma, where for me, it could just roll off my back like water off the back of a duck. Another way to put it, it’s like you and I can both eat the same hamburger or the same plant-based veggie burger, okay? And I might gain a pound and you might not gain any weight. Why is that? Because our biological differences and the way our physiology works, and also our emotional fabric is different. 

And what I’ve noticed over the years, and I’m a big, a big proponent of emotional healing, Louise Hay, in the Hay Foundation, you may know of them, they’ve created a whole body of work around correlating the emotional, or the physical attribute or whatever you’re expressing symptom and they tied back to some emotional challenge. So there’s actually kind of like a dictionary about being able to connect those two events. Also, you inherit emotional traumas. In your DNA, you’re given, and as you expressed, while your mother was carrying you, you’re not even birthed yet, but there was so much trauma going around in the family dynamic that that information was transferred to you. 

And then now you get born and you’re already carrying baggage that you don’t even know how to articulate or where to sort it out. So which you’ve also discussed how that could come up and be triggered by an event later on in your adulthood. And what happens, I think often, is we get caught in this little trap where we try to intellectualize the cause and effect. Well, I woke up and my back hurts. So what did I do yesterday that pulled up that strain in my back that could have caused it. But yet that back pain could have been some trauma that you’ve been carrying for 20 years that had nothing to do with yesterday, right?

Eva Detko, PhD

Yes, definitely.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

But we try to reflect what did I do wrong? And it’s not about that. But the good news on all this, and I’m sure you’ll get into this a little bit, what I found to be the most miraculous way to heal is actually the emotional piece. Sometimes the biological and physical side takes a while, depending on like, for instance, if you’re very toxic, it may take months or a year or two to get rid of the toxins you’ve been accumulating for decades, right? But emotional healing, once you kind of figure the trigger, you can just ask for forgiveness. There are many different methods. And you’re the expert in this area. But you can release that emotional trauma that’s being encased, that you’re holding and you and almost instantaneously, it erases all that emotional piece that has maybe affected your physiology. Not just yours, but the effect of that emotions that you might be transferring to the family members around you. It releases that as well. So this is such an amazing area. Again, I’m just so honored that you’re here to tell us about it. So with that, I hope I didn’t lose your train of thought. You’re on such a roll. And I just felt it was so important to take a chance to just breathe and digest what you just told us, because it’s so important.

Eva Detko, PhD

Yeah, you absolutely got it right that we could have two people going through the exact same experience and one of them will come away traumatized, and the other will be absolutely fine. That absolutely is what you need to know about trauma. It is determined internally. And your level of resilience, your level of resilience will determine where you actually going to have this encoded as a trauma, and then therefore haunt you until you resolve it. But also this is the same in terms of getting chronic symptoms, of getting infected or being sort of your body giving into infections. Because when you have the sort of early exposure to stress, and like I said, this could be minor things, they don’t have to be huge traumas. And because obviously attachment trauma is a lot of the time about lack of bonding, lack of safety. What was in that rather than was there. 

Was there enough appropriate, physical contact? Did I get enough cuddles and kisses as a child? Did that feel like loft and protected? So if a child doesn’t have that, that’s enough to have those developmental type issues, which will then lead to all sorts of adaptations because the child needs to survive. So, like I said, it’s not about narcissistic and sociopathic parents. That’s really important to remember because a lot of people think eh, nah, I didn’t really have any major traumas in childhood. Like I said, obviously we cannot neglect major traumas because for some people that’s definitely gonna be a piece. But in chronic illness, what I’m seeing is that the absolutely the bigger factor is the detachment trauma and intergenerational trauma, you’ve already mentioned that. So what that then does is like I said, it will definitely neurologically imbalance things. 

Your limbic system becomes conditioned to respond to a threat, and don’t forget, it doesn’t have to be a real threat. It can be a perceived threat, it can be a friend that you just thought about, an old memory, and your brain goes, threat, threat. And this neurochemical cascade will resolve from that. It doesn’t have to be a threat that’s actually real and immediately in front of you. So then you get triggered, and you get triggered and you get triggered. This leads to HPA axis dysfunction. This leads also to cell danger, all of those things work together. So the cell danger response. The work of Robert Naviaux defined that cells will just get stuck. It will get stuck in this protective mode. So yeah. 

Then you’re going to have chronic fatigue issues because your mitochondria are not able to work the way they should because they’re stuck in protective mode. So all of that, all of those physiological layers, will happen as a result of those early unresolved emotional stresses and traumas, often micro traumas like I said. But of course, I did wanna emphasize this is something we can heal. I had so many traumas as a child because it started, like I said, with something as traumatic as obviously my mother’s sister dying. But then I was actually born as a result of my mother’s pregnancy going badly wrong. She had toxemia of pregnancy because of her emotional state. And what was interesting is, was the consultant, head consultant actually made that connection. They told her that was the reason why she developed toxemia pregnancy was because of her trauma and emotional state, and the shock that she went into after her sister died. 

And so then my sibling, because she was pregnant with twins, my sibling didn’t make it, the baby died before the birth. I barely made it. And all of that was extremely traumatic. My mother was also very compromised. She still remembers, interestingly, the conversation that the doctors had when she was going into labor, because I was breached as well, all sorts of things were going on. And they basically debated whether to save me or to save her. She heard them having that conversation. So they were deciding like, if all goes wrong, you know, are we going for mother or are we going for the child? So there was all of that. So you imagine that’s already quite a lot for a little system that is not even developed yet to take on. So when I was born, I was a weakling. I was a weakling. I would get sick a lot. 

And luckily, because my grandmother just lost her daughter, I was very bonded with my grandma and she poured so much love into me. And I think in some ways that that as my saving grace, because if I had had all of these traumas and then I wouldn’t have had all the love and affection that followed, I think I would have actually ended up in a even worse situation. But then I went to school. I was a weak child. I was bullied. I had all sorts of things. So when you look at the ACEs study, which I’m sure a lot of people will be familiar with, the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, which actually initially only looked at those big traumas, let’s remember that this was a landmark study. It was important to put trauma on the map, but it was very limited in that it was only looking at those big traumas. 

And what about the little traumas that I just said, the attachment stuff, they can never looked at that to begin with. But even with what they looked at, they still showed this massive correlation with pretty much every single chronic issue under the sun, whether it was heart disease of cancer or autoimmune disease or COPD. You know, they showed correlation with all of those different things when you have those adverse childhood experiences. And as far as those adverse childhood experiences, I had so many, I was like literally way up there on that list. And yet I managed to heal it all. So I don’t want people to think that, you know, once you head it, that’s it, you’re done, you’re never gonna get better. Of course, you’re gonna get better. I wanna talk a little bit more about, afterwards, maybe at the end, about the . 

What people need to know is that neuroscience has moved on so much in this last set of two decades. And so now the tools that we use are very targeted, can be very targeted, or we can heal heal the amygdala, ’cause that’s the part of the brain that’s gonna literally put you on those emotional roller coasters, right? So we can heal that in a very targeted way. It doesn’t take years therapy. It’s not like that anymore. I always address that in every interview because people can still have this old view of therapy, you know, that they have to be in it for years. It’s really not like that anymore. And you can definitely heal that. Once you heal the brain, once you heal the nervous stem, everything starts falling into place. 

This is very important. And sort of going to what you just said, Robby, that that’s such an important piece that even when you do all this physiological, biological stuff, the dietary stuff, I’m not saying you shouldn’t, you definitely should, it’s a very important piece. And at the end of the day, the physical is very much part of the system, right? And in this triangle of healing, as I call it, with the physical, the mental, emotional, and the energetic, everything affects everything else. There’s constant interaction between all of those parts of the system. So yes, we do need to optimize our nutrition. We need to, if you already have infections, yes, you need to supplement. You need to use saunas. You need to use binders. 

You need to do all those things. But when you do the emotional piece, when you tick that emotional piece box, or at least when you start working on it, because obviously there is, you know, there can be a lot of complexity to that, which I wanna unravel a little bit more. But even if you stop working on it, what you’ll find is that your body start to respond completely differently. I’ve had so many clients over the years who have been chasing infections over the years and decades, some of them, chasing that issues for years and decades. various other things like that where they would get better, they would get worse, they will get better, they would get worse. And it’s just up, down, up, down, up, down. 

Is when they’ve done the trauma work suddenly the supplements that we’re not really doing that much for them, and they were just like flushing a lot of money down the drain, you could say, suddenly, and some of the supplements, people were not even tolerating. When they have so much stress in the system, so much trauma and emotional stuff trapped, that emotional energy trapped in the system, oftentimes, they have a lot of sensitivity because of that, and they will not even be able to, nevermind absorb some of those supplements, but also, they could, for instance, react to different things that are supposed to be good for them. And yet they have those allergic or sensitivity reactions to them. 

And so suddenly when they do in the trauma work, everything starts falling into place and suddenly all the dietary protocols, all the supplements and all the other strategies that they are being putting time, and energy and money into, they start to work so much better. And so that is basically why this is the piece that brings it all together. And I would like to actually say why that is as well, but you want to come in.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

I have to, because once again, you just given us a whole bunch of great stuff. First off, you talked about the triangle and how it’s all connected. First off, when you were describing, you know, the mechanisms of the body and the systems of the body, every single Lyme patient and practitioner that’s listening to this summit can relate, every single one can relate to what you’re saying. Secondly, this emotional piece, it isn’t like a consecutive therapy. First we do the emotion, then, no, first we do the physical, then we do nutritional, you know, in that step. So what we have seen in clinic that the order that you do things in and the way that you dose what you do can make all the difference in the result. But with emotional healing, this isn’t a consecutive piece. This is a concurrent piece. You can do emotional healing while you’re doing your physical healing so that it can all come together. And, maybe not so much in Europe, but certainly in the US in the allopathic Western approach, they like to systematize things and get things broken up into little compartments, and you have to do this, and then you have to do that. 

And I believe, because it is broken out and it’s not looked at holistically as a complete body with 15 or 20 systems that have to work in unison in order for the body to really be healthy, I believe that’s part of the challenge with the Western approach. But I believe that holistically, we should actually be addressing all of these types of things in a plan, a treatment plan, altogether. And so, you know, what you’re saying is so important and so relevant. And now I really wanna dive into the tips and the things that we can do with the Lyme community today. But I, again, I’m sorry to even break into your, I hope I’m not changing your momentum. And for people that are tuning in, because Dr. Eva is reporting from Poland, you’ll notice that there’s a little bit of lag in the transmission, but listen carefully to the words that she’s saying, because they’re so relevant and so important. So with that, let’s continue.

Eva Detko, PhD

Yeah, and yeah, what I want to actually specifically emphasize apart from the fact that, the way I would put it is that the emotional piece, it’s almost like you get the most bing for your buck, or however the saying goes, right? Because like I said, ’cause it brings everything together. But just so people really understand how is that relevant to somebody who’s fighting this chronic Lyme, right? Well, even, if we just looking at a chronic Lyme from the point of view that it’s a chronic infection and this a lot of chronic inflammation, and you just look at this nervous system balance that I was talking about, the survival states of fight, flight and freeze versus the rest, digest, detoxify and heal response. If you just look at that, because there’s lots of other pieces we’ve talked about, HPI axis and all of those sort of things that are going on. But even if you just look at the vagus nerve involvement, so your rest, digest, detoxify and heal, that’s your ventral vagus nerve, which, by the way, supplies most of the organs in your chest and abdominal cavity. 

And that includes the immune organs. So not just the gut, because we’re talking about the vagus nerve supplies, a small intestine and two thirds of the large intestine, but also spleen also primus. And we also know from studies that early exposure to stress and trauma has been shown to impact the gut integrity and the microbiome as well. And your immune function overall. So that’s just the connection again to the early trauma. But when you have that system is not, the part that’s supposed to be activating 90% of the time, which is the rest and digest, is not really, I think it was was Jason said, “It’s like a limp noodle.” Yeah, I like that. It doesn’t the tone that it needs to have. It doesn’t activate readily. That’s a problem. And then we have the other side that is really strong and activating readily, and that’s your fight or flight. And you constantly off-freeze, which a lot of people with chronic Lyme will relate to. It’s like a complete shutdown. That’s how they feel. So when we have that imbalance, you can understand there is obviously going to be a problem. 

If this vagus nerve that is supposed to be supplying your immune organs, it innovates, not, your immune organs is not working properly, of course, those immune organs will not be functioning properly, , you’re not gonna not have enough power and strength within your immune system to fight any infection, Lyme or otherwise. But also what you need to understand is that the vagus nerve puts a brake on, when it works properly, it can put a break on chronic information. That’s one of the primary key roles that vagus nerve has, is to help curb inflammation. And that’s the, they call it anti-cholinergic pathway. And so when that doesn’t work, again, the chronic inflammation is not gonna turn off when it’s supposed to turn off. So obviously some inflammation, obviously we know inflammation as such is not a bad thing. It’s just when it turns chronic, when it never turns off when it’s supposed to turn up. 

So again, that neurological imbalance will contribute to that problem. And in fact, we know that if anybody with chronic inflammation issues, period, has vagus nerve issues. That’s it. It’s because that connection is so tight, so strong. That’s basically what it is. So I just wanted to just emphasize, how does that work. Is that like some sort of “Hocus Pocus” ? No, it is really, it makes perfect sense that the fact that when you’re talking about the psycho emotional stuff, you really talking about massive impact, not just on your energy field, but on your brain and your nervous system, and then your brain and your nervous system is directly connected to all your organs and dictates your biology, essentially dictates how you do physiologically. So I just wanted to just summarize that. And so, like I said, yes, we can heal from this. 

We can definitely heal from this. When we’re talking about healing this nervous system dysfunction, as a result of all these traumas, all those emotional layers, I like to break it down into two approaches. So for somebody who says, “wow, I think I’ve got this issue. I wanna jump right in. And I’m going to get to the root cause of my traumas and heal that right away,” great, that’s one approach. However, I also appreciate that not everybody will be in that place. And some people will be just purely, even too overwhelmed with the information we’re giving them, nevermind the possibility of going after the root causes of their emotional stuff. So what I would say here that it’s very, very important to, at the very least, discharge emotional energy on an ongoing basis so it doesn’t build up. because you already, if you in a place where you actually are quite sick right now, I can guarantee there is a lot of unresolved emotional staff, emotional layers, trauma layers, micro traumas, everything like that. 

On top of each other is probably quite a lot of complexity there. And you might feel, right, “I’m following my diet, I’m doing my supplements schedule and I’m supposed to be dealing with that as well?” That’s just like, whoa. Even thinking about it will make some people so overwhelmed. So I just wanna say, just stop, just stop. If you feel that this is coming at you, and there’s another thing that you have to do. And, oh my goodness. And it’s all a little bit much, just stop, okay? Take it one step at a time. So if you in that group of people with chronic Lyme who literally are very sick and that probably in freeze response most of the time, then it’s a good idea to just dip your toe in and just try to build some resilience first before you go and do a deep into trauma work. You can absolutely… Absolutely, I recommend that you do a deep dive into trauma work, but if you currently really sick, then you probably really want to do it gently. 

Don’t overload the system. Start with some simple things that you can do to build a little bit of resilience into the system, so you don’t feel so overwhelmed when it comes to addressing some of those deeper layers. And an example of that could be just starting to do a slow, deep breathing practice. That could be something so simple because even meditation can be overwhelming for some people. particularly, if they’re not used to it. A lot of people get activated, and they actually end up activating fight or flight rather than their rest and digest response from meditation, which is obviously what meditation is supposed to do. 

But if you’re not used to it, if it’s something new to you, if it’s something that you get a little bit worked up about, because maybe you have some sort of perfectionistic view of what your meditation should look like, that may not be a modality for you at this time. But if you want an entry level to meditation and then slowly building it up, slow, deep breathing, prayer, whatever. There could be lots of ways in which we do this. But it has to be slow because when you start doing hardcore breathing, like maybe Wim Hoff type breathing, or Breath of Fire, there are some forms of breathing that are very, very activating. So for somebody who’s very sick, that’s not appropriate. So we need to distinguish that some breathing methods will not be appropriate. That’s why I’m emphasizing deep and slow. 

Whatever’s deep and slow with the emphasis on long exhale, will be calming for your system, will activate your vagus nerve. And even doing that, let’s say you do that for five minutes three times a day, and that’s it. That’s all I want you to do. After a few weeks, you will start feeling a little bit stronger, a little bit more resilient, and then you can lay other things in, because I know what it’s like. I can give you millions of tools here, I can give you so many wonderful tools, but if people who are listening are already very sick and really overwhelmed already with the different things that the practitioners are telling them to do and not do, they can just turn it off and go like, “Okay, I just cannot take another thing on. 

There’s just too much.” So I’m encouraging you, if you in that group of people listening to this, then you wanna put more emphasis on making yourself a little bit more neurologically and emotionally resilient first, for doing those simple strategies that can activate your vagus nerve like slow, deep breathing. And then after that, as you start to feel stronger and more resilient, you will be able to go after some of your traumas. And you can actually teach that. People can do it. A lot of the trauma work people can do themselves. I teach people how to do it themselves. You don’t even have to necessarily be with a practitioner all the time, okay? So a lot of the trauma work, I’m a firm believer, I teach it and I’ve proven it right, time and time again, that once you’re ready, you can do a lot of this work yourself. But if you in that group, that it’s just all feels a little bit too much, start low and slow, and then build some resilience before you go deeper.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Yeah, that’s so important and so easy to do, to kind of slow it down. And we’re living in this horrible global environment where we’re all afraid because of pandemic, and people getting sick around us, and the fear of potentially getting sick or transmitting a virus potentially to one another, and the impact on that, that with everything that’s going on and even managing your Lyme, now you’ve got something else on top of that. And every news station and newspaper you pick up keeps reminding you about the horrific things that are going on and the statistical numbers of how it’s affecting every culture and every country in the world. It’s very hard to escape that, to find that safe place, that happy place, the place where you feel that you are completely comfortable. And that’s where I start generally is finding a room or finding a place in my home or anywhere. 

It could be your favorite garden you go to, or a spot in the front yard. I go back to when I was nine years old, and my grandmother used to have me take a midday nap under the peach tree in my backyard. And so I go right there in my brain, now, you know, that’s going back 60 plus years. So, you know, breathing is really great. You know, oftentimes what I do, I do doing my infrared sauna in the morning. I’m usually there before the sun rises. And that’s where I, you know, ask for forgiveness. And I think about what I’m grateful for. And I kind of set my intentions for the day. And that’s where I have a chance, it’s not really the formal meditation, but it gives me an opportunity to really get right to the vagal tone, like you mentioned, and sort of align myself both emotionally, spiritually, and then that affects me physically. 

So again, these are things that you don’t have to go out for. You can do it within. And there are some building blocks and certainly you’re a major resource to figure out what those steps are. So that’s kind of important. And then I just wanna say something anecdotal to people listening. So in my family, and this is a story about emotional baggage, okay? So when you go on a holiday, you packed your bag and you get on the train, or the plane or the car and you get to your location. And if let’s say it’s an Airbnb, you unpack your bag, you get settled in your little holiday and then you move on for whatever you’re gonna be doing. So that could be the same for your emotional status. 

So you pack your emotions into the suitcase, right? And then when you get to your next location, what do you do? You should unpack that emotional suitcase, let those emotions out, you know, clear out any of the things you you’re harboring, which is what you stated earlier, right? And then you’re kind of in a healthy state because you’re ready for your vacation, your holiday. You’re emotionally ready, you’re physically ready. They all work together. Now, in my family, we don’t unpack the bag. What we do is when we run out of room in that emotional suitcase, we just buy another suitcase, and we buy another suitcase. And then all of a sudden it went from just an overnight bag, now we’re traveling with, you know, 15 different, five or 10 bags, you know. So we never learned as a family to unpack those emotions. And maybe people out there can relate to that, in just an anecdotal funny way. But really this is so important in health, and maintaining that stress and then maintaining that inner emotional balance that affects everything else around us. So-

Eva Detko, PhD

Can I actually comment on that? ‘Cause that’s actually another two really, really easy tools to help you build resilience. Gratitude is actually, we’ve shown in studies, it increases heart rate variability. So gratitude is absolutely great, gratitude practice. I teach it in combination with Havening techniques, which is one of the key modalities that I use throughout my work. So that’s even a more sort of impactful combination. But whether you do just gratitude before you go to bed or first thing in the morning, or you do gratitude journaling, that’s all really, really great. And that’s definitely going to help you build resilience. And I also want to say that another thing that you can do, if you’re not into, you know, like full blown meditation, obviously guided meditation. 

But also, what I really to encourage people to do is to make sure that you do those visualizations of how you’re gonna be when you’ve recovered, how you’re gonna be, what you’re gonna be doing, what you’re gonna be seeing, what you’re gonna be hearing, what you’re gonna be saying to yourself, how you’re gonna be behaving, what’s gonna be going on around you with the people around you when you are well, when you are at your outcome, whatever it is that you want to get to with your health. So start building that in your mind because your subconscious mind will start acting on that and we’ll start adjusting your biology as though it’s already happening. 

That’s like, that’s a concept for a whole other interview, but it definitely absolutely works that way. And so what I would say is that when you’re doing those sort of visualizations, you wanna be in your own body. And so you’re looking for whatever you’re looking at with your own eyes, as in, you’re already living this imagery out, you know, you’ve kind of in it as though it’s already happening. And then another really beautiful thing to do is when you finished with that little visualization, express gratitude for what you’ve just experienced as though it’s already happened. So not just be grateful for your everyday thanks, which is a good practice. 

But what I’m saying is, I hope that makes sense, expressing gratitude for things that you want to happen in the future as though that’ve already happened. That’s a really good trick to put your subconscious on the right track, to make sure that you headed in the right direction. But I also wanted to comment… So those are great. And all of those things will help you build resilience. You just need to make it a practice. It’s not like a one-off thing. And then, you know, you don’t have to do it again. If you’re serious about building some resilience, you need to make it a regular thing. So you could be doing slow breathing first thing in the morning, you could be doing your gratitude for a few minutes at night and maybe a visualization in the middle of the day or something like that. 

And then you bringing your nervous system back to come over and over and over again. So it’s not just say that an hour of meditation is not a good thing, but you can do an hour of meditation without the mind going up. Not many people, not many people. So you need to train yourself to do that, and seriously train yourself. But what you can do is a few minutes here, a few minutes here, a few minutes here. And then what that does is even if the toxicity that you have in your body, or the infection that you have in your body is actually stimulating a fight and flight or freeze. You just consciously bring your body and your mind back to calm and back to parasympathetic over and over and over again. And that way you train it to be more responsive. So it’s not to say that doing something for a long period of time is not good. It is good, but who can do that? No, you know, like people who are sick, can’t do that. 

So just know that even if you do it for a few minutes at a time, but do it more frequently, it’s absolutely valid and it’s gonna help you build resilience. And one more thing that I wanna comment on is something that you said, is about the garbage. It’s not just about what you do, it’s just as much about what you don’t do. This is really important. Somebody in Egypt was posting a video a while back and saying, “We don’t have a pandemic here in Egypt.” And so the person was like, “Huh? Really?” “Yeah, because most people here don’t have televisions.” Literally. There’s none of that. 

And people are not watching this. People are not wining themselves up. They’re not creating nocebo effect from the constant fear and making themselves sick. They’re not doing that. Okay, so we need to take this seriously. The garbage on mainstream media, I’m sorry, it’s just garbage, it’s lies, it has to go. Literally, if you want to have a healthy mind, you either need to restrict it to the minimum, ideally, you don’t engage with it at all. And anybody who is sick needs to do that because you’re going to really struggle to heal emotionally if you constantly put that sort of junk inside your mind. 

So this goes back to detox ’cause that’s toxicity. There’s a lot of fear, anger and various things to wind you up on purpose, by the way. This is mind control. That’s real, that’s real, that exists. So when you have that toxic input all the time, think about when you detoxing your body and you’re just going to McDonald’s every day, and then you go in and doing your green smoothies, that doesn’t make any sense. If you really wanna detox, you going to not, you know, you’re gonna stop putting junk in your body to begin with. That’s how you detox. That’s what makes sense. So the same thing, emotionally, if you’re on an emotional detox, stop putting junk in your mind to begin with, and then also do those other tools. And by combining what you not doing with what you’re doing, you’re gonna have a really beautiful . But that’s where a lot of people fall short, I have to say.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Love it.

Eva Detko, PhD

They just keep pumping

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Love it.

Eva Detko, PhD

The toxicity in.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Fantastic. All right. So man, we spent so much time today and really, everybody out there is so gonna appreciate your words of wisdom. We are coming to a close. I need to comment on a couple of things that have worked for me on visualization. Sometimes, like when I was working out and I was you know, body shaping, I wanted to get those chiseled abs, you know, like whatever they call it, an eight pack, 12 pack, four pack. I was happy with a two pack when I first got started, by the way. So I took a picture of like just the midsection that showed a chiseled ab and I had that in my home gym and I have it, that same picture, in my visual picture, in my office, my home office. And so every so often I glanced at it and then it would remind me that, oh yeah, that’s the abs that I’m going to have, that I am working to have. So I was constantly reminding myself and sometimes there are other tricks. 

You can put a little sticky on your window, or mirror in the bathroom. So when you’re brushing your teeth, you can say, oh, remind myself that I need to be grateful for all that my parents have done and my family have done to support me during my Lyme challenge. And it’s just a little reminder, a little sticky, but while you’re brushing your teeth, you then actually doing a few things at once. But you’re constantly reminding yourself what you dream about, what you manifest in your dreams and in your affirmations becomes your reality, okay? So that’s why in many religions, you pray before bedtime, or you create an affirmation asking for forgiveness or focusing on what you’re grateful for. Simple words, simple language. 

Sometimes it could just be prayer. It isn’t about organized religion. It’s really about organizing your thinking, channeling your thinking towards creating an optimal and a healthy emotional output. So when you say that prayer before bed, that’s the last words that come into your brain. Now, you go to sleep and it’s continuing to resonate. And so when you wake up in the morning, you’re grateful or you’re thankful, or you’re manifesting that visual dream of what you want to be just as you described it. And it’s happened so well for me and for everyone that we’ve touched that we’ve talked about this exercise. 

It doesn’t cost a lot of money, and you don’t need to go through Freudian therapy for years and years to discover this about. You can start this today and you can start manifesting your dreams tomorrow. And then one last thought on my side, and then we’ll bring this to a close. There was a time with my daughter. She was standing at the top of, we have a split-level home, she was at the top of the stairs and I looked up and on our island, right in our kitchen, was every medication. There was no room on that island, the tabletop for me to even put a cup of coffee and I’m looking at this and I’m thinking, “Oh my God, like, how does my daughter even know what medication to take at what time?” You know, like, but she was sort of a walking, you know, PDR, which is a reference guide that doctors use. 

She knew more than the doctors knew, as many Lyme patients out there will be. And I looked up and I saw Julia at the top of the stairs and I said, “Julia, can you imagine a day when you won’t have to take any of these medications? Like this complete tabletop will be clear.” And her answer was, “No, day, I know that I’m always be on that.” So if she is telling herself that she will always be on them, then she will be always on them. If she’s telling herself that, no, this is just the time that I have to do this to get to the other end of the tunnel. Then she focuses on the other end of the tunnel, coming out healthy, vibrant, you know, integrated in the things that she wants to do in her life, what I call, her bliss. 

And in fact, she will achieve that. When it’ll happen, really is something that we all don’t know and it’s individual. But if you don’t manifest that dream of being healthy, then you’ll always be in that state. And you know, not necessarily as vital as you can be. And that’s this whole piece today, what we’re talking about is that emotional piece, that emotional health and understanding how to get there. And it has to come from a place of knowing in your heart, and in your mind and in your soul that you will actually be coming of the other end of the tunnel in a healthy, vibrant state. And it could be simply as taking a picture of yourself when you were younger and you were vibrant before you were affected by Lyme disease and say, yeah, that’s just how I was then. 

And this is how I will be again, just an older version of myself, but as healthy and as vibrant. And if there’s anything we can say today that will change and move that mountain it’s this, and how important this emotional healing piece is. So with that, I just wanna tell everybody about Eva Detko, PhD. She’s got masterclasses that you can find. You can go to her website, which is doctor, I think it’s dr-eva.com, and there you can find out all the different things. You can reach out to her. You can reach out to her staff. You can find out all the tools, she’s published everywhere. 

She’s got amazing videos. There’s just a collection of things that she’s put together over the years that are so relevant to what we’re talking about today. So don’t miss connecting with Dr. Eva because she is someone special, and she’s got the ingredients to help you get on the road to recovery. So with that, Dr. Eva, let’s bring this to a close. I feel sad. I’m getting little goosebumps thinking that we have to actually end this. But please tell us if you could leave us with a few words, some inspiration, how would you like to end our dialogue today?

Eva Detko, PhD

Well, I’d like to reiterate what you just said, Robby, certainly over the years, I’ve had so many clients who decided, “Hey, I’m gonna work towards getting off my depression medication, or diabetes medication or heart medication, whatever medication, right? And it’s that moment that they decide that that’s what they want to do, that it starting. That’s the turning point in the journey. So that’s very, very important to basically be able to visualize yourself when you no longer taking the stuff away. You actually, well , and it doesn’t have to be, you know, huge and pompous, but something really simple, maybe like going for a walk with your family or something like that. Something that you may not be able to do now, imagine yourself, something that you would like to do, doing it, and be in your own body when you are doing it. Everything starts with an intention. So just have that intention today for yourself going forward and just have an intention for this being your turning point.

Robby Besner PSc.D.

Wow. Amazing. We’d love you, Dr. Eva. Hay, but thank you so much for sharing your day, your time, your expertise and your words of wisdom to the community. I think this is one of the most beneficial interviews of the summit. Thank you so much for joining us. 

Everybody, it’s Robby Besner. Thanks so much for joining us today. Please share this content with anyone that you think might benefit from it. And we’re looking forward to having you with us tomorrow for another great interview.