Energetic and Spiritual Considerations in Healing From Lyme Disease and Other Tick-borne Illnesses

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Hey, Dr. Greg, so great to be here. So honored to be part of this and thanks for the opportunity to speak about, you know, a really important topic. And hopefully we’ll be able to really shed some light on it today.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

This one with regards, I think you are, have been speaking into this for a very long time, educating other providers as well, have treated thousands of patients with Lyme. And so I wanted to ask you, why has Lyme become so pervasive and difficult to treat?

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, I think it’s a great place to start Greg, because, you know, Lyme disease has typically been known as sort of this, you know, Northeastern type of thing, you know, where we have like 95% of our cases in the Northeast and a little bit in the Midwest, but it’s been spreading. And I think there’s a couple of, I remember like when I was a student at the University of Vermont doing my undergrad, you know, playing outside and everything, it was great, ’cause there were no ticks there and now there’s ticks all over in Vermont. So some of it’s global climate change where we see, you know, the cold is either really cold or not cold enough. And the heat’s really hot and not hot enough. And so we’re starting to see seasons be a little different. 

And so we’re seeing that the range of the deer tick that transmits Lyme diseases is broader. We’re also seeing that like, you know, as habitats change things like songbirds are carrying, you know, ticks to different areas and whereas before they would fall off and several of them couldn’t establish, now they’re establishing, you know, populations just because the temperature change, you know, we’re certainly seeing the more human development that we have, like the more they like edge habitat, which is essentially what it sounds like. It’s like the edge of your yard is a great place to get Lyman and so the host of the Lyme bacterium, the spirochete that causes Lyme is called Borrelia burgdorferi live, you know, a lot of chipmunks and mice are these sort of reservoirs. And they live in this 10 feet into the woods and 10 feet onto your lawn area, which we call the edge and that’s where the deer ticks are hanging out. So the more we chop up the environment, the more edge we have, the more tick habitat we have, but I think there’s another piece that’s really that’s sort of like the science background part of it, right? 

Like in the, like when I talk at the doctor conference, but really the big thing, Greg, is that there’s been an energetic shift on the planet that we’ve all sort of been experiencing for a long time. And some of my mentors talk about it, even being back as far as like World War II is a big shift, but then we’ve had 9/11 and we have a lotta other things happening. And with social media and everything, we’re all so raw right now. And there’s such a negative energy going on that I think that that’s a huge part of it, is people have become more susceptible the more they get sucked into looking outside of themselves. And I’m not saying that any one of these things are bad or that I just use the term negative energy. 

I don’t even know if there is really a thing, but there are poles, right? And I think that when we become aware of it, and we understand that we’re putting our, the more we allow our energies to be outside of us primarily, and rather than focused inward, and then allowing that energy and our light to shine out, the more susceptible we come to disease and what I’ve found over the last 13 or so years is people who are centered in their bodies are much more resilient. And even if they get sick, they heal a lot more rapidly. And the people who are more externally focused have a generally a harder time. And so that’s really a lot of the work we do is to say, let’s make ourselves the world’s worst host for Lyme or the world’s worst viral host, you know, let’s make ourselves just these beacons of love and that will help support our immune system so we’re less likely to get any of these in the first place. And if we do, we can heal more rapidly.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Interesting, you know, that totally resonates with me pun intended. 

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

In that, sorry, I couldn’t pass that one up, but that component, you know, with your osteopathic background and my naturopathic background of the body can heal itself. And I’ve been a big proponent of, there’s not a bug or disease process that is more powerful than an embodied human, right?

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Completely.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

And so what you’re speaking into is, you know, with kind of the chaos of what we see externally outside of us, which is kind of a representative of what’s happening in the internal space for a lot of people, because that’s, the illusion is getting reflected back to us. So that component around, you know, taking care of like your head space, what’s in your body and raising your vitality basically is what you’re talking about there, yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Well, and it’s interesting ’cause like James Allen, you know, wrote a book long time ago, “As A Man Thinketh,” and he talks about there’s this big, long, beautiful quote, but the crux of it is your environment is but you’re looking glass. So the external environment, the stories that you’re seeing and experiencing are really a reflection of what’s going on within you. And for me personally, I went through Lyme and Babesia heavy metal toxicity. And it was a 12 and a half year journey of healing, which really turned me on to being accepting of who I was. ‘Cause I grew up like, so into this energetic thing and being one with the planet, feeling the just naturally feeling worms under the ground and the sap moving in the trees. 

And then everybody told me I was nuts. So I block a lotta that out and it’s not blocking it out, but it’s about, it’s almost like a rheostat there’s times to be really aware and then there’s times to be, and sort of just open and receptive and other times where you have to think a little more, but we can dial those things up and down and so I was just told, “No, you’re weird, so don’t do that.” And that set me up to be more susceptible for Lyme and to learn from it. So I’m like, what did I learn from it? Part of it was to be more embodied in myself and then to teach this to others. So I think it’s important. And when we look at like medical science, it’s really interesting because a lot of people are looking at heart rate variability these days. I mean, I see an aura ring on your finger. Like I wear one at night, you know, we’re all looking at it, right? And it’s important to know our physiology, but a lot of the ways we can actually change heart rate variability is to be embodied, have our energy fully embodied in our being and be present while we’re doing whatever we’re doing. 

And so whether that’s sleeping or talking or going out on a mountain bike ride or skiing, or whatever it is you do, you can optimize your ability to do it by being grounded in your body and what’s interesting is like, I love exploring grounding ’cause you know, we teach lots of different practices to help people do that. But a lot of people are like, “Well isn’t grounding just gonna bring me too in?” I’m like, “No, it opens up everything.” Like when your energies are grounded to the earth, you can ground ground, ground, ground, ground into infinity and you can go out into infinity and eventually it’s gonna bring you back to being grounded within yourself. So it’s like kind of like infinity, it’s like it’s just this connected loop. But I find that like being grounded allows me to measure increases in heart rate variability. We talk about gratitude practices. The more we feel centered in our heart, the higher our heart rate variability. 

So in the other side, the science side what’s that mean? Well, that means our immune system is op working more optimally, it means that we have greater resilience distress. We have greater resilience to infection so we can scientifically monitor all these things, right? Or we can just, the more we get grounded in our own body, we can just be, it just feels natural and right. Like you said, like your, you know, your pun of being resonates, people who get grounded are like, “This shit feels so good.”

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Like that’s your natural state to be connected to the planet and to the cosmos all at the same time.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

All right. So let’s back up here. Let’s back up to-

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Rabbit hole.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

So you had this personal journey experience with Lyme and heavy metals, so how does Lyme disease present? What are the risk factors for developing chronic Lyme disease? Because not everybody develops a chronic state of this either.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Correct. Well, I think that’s so important to understand that you can get bit by a tick. You can get treated the conventional way and you can be fine. There are actually people who get bitten by a tick, get Lyme disease and then they don’t even get sick, right? So we know that from we’ve been able to find people who have these blood tests that prove that they’ve had it, but they were never even sick and they don’t have symptoms. So there is a component of the host. So Lyme disease typically is thought of as summer flu. So, you know, you’ve got aches and pains, muscle and joint aches, you’re fatigued, maybe have some brain fog. Occasionally about 50% of people, statistically will get a rash, you know, the CDC talks a lot about the bullseye rash and the erythema migraines being about 75% of the time. It’s a little less than that in research, but it’s a 50/50. So some people get a bullseye rash. 

Most people just get like a red splotch or a purple splotch. That’s actually the same rash. They just look a little different. So we’re not looking just for a bullseye, we might, we’re really looking for that erythema migraines, which a bullseye is a type of, and occasionally somebody to get like a red, hot, swollen knee, or they’ll have a cardiac, a heart electrical issue, but it’s pretty uncommon. So most of the time you feel like the flu in the summer, or you got bit in September and you start to feel like you have the flu in December, you go for your flu test and lo and behold, you don’t have flu. So at the further out you go from the infection, the more you get the musculoskeletal sort of more looking like a fibromyalgia type of thing. And you’ll also start to have things like, you know, the brain fog go, especially for me, what I noticed was the executive function stuff. I just couldn’t put sentences together. 

I couldn’t retrieve stuff as fast, so a lot of like, you know, parents and people who have, you know, out in the workforce will notice that they’re just a little slower where they’re not putting things together like they used to, word recall sometimes, or you’re forgetting your friends’ names, little things like that, where you’re just like, hey, I’m like 35, but I’m starting to feel like I have early Alzheimer’s, you know, that kind of thing. And we see, so in adults we see a lot of stuff that ultimately gets diagnosed as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue once we get outta that acute window and then in kids, a lotta times they’ll see behavioral changes and like your kids acting completely normal. And a week later they seem like they need an exorcism. Like they’re just bat shit crazy for lack of a better term, right? They just an acute behavioral change and we can have OCD and rage. We, you know, we can have return of bedwetting in, or even just peeing your pants at school even like if you’re older, acute food restrictions sometimes happen when Lyme interacts with the immune system and attacks the brain. So they’re some of the basics.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Does that mimic in children in PANDAS? Is PANDAS related to that at all? Or can it mimic that pressure?

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, so PANS and PANDAS is essentially a type of infection induced, autoimmune encephalitis, so infection triggers autoimmunity, and you start going after your brain and you cause some inflammation. So PANS is that pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric syndrome and PANDAS was the original description where they, the S is about strep. And they originally thought it was just strep because that’s where they saw it. But then they found it was different viruses like Epstein-Barr. Then we saw Lyme and some of the co-infections of Lyme disease, like Babesiosis or Bartonella can trigger it and so on and so forth, even candida yeast could trigger this autoimmune inflammation or encephalitis. And so, yeah, so Lyme will, and some of the co-infections can trigger that. So there’s a huge overlap and Lyme and Bartonella can also directly make symptoms that look like PANS that are not PANS, but essentially there’s a huge overlap, Greg.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Got it. Got it. So would we talk about this Lyme? You know, everybody gets fixated on the bug and really what I hear you’re talking about is like, it’s not about the bug. I mean, yes, that’s important and there’s this component. So Lyme disease is the parasite. So on, you know, it’s not just the bug though, because it affects multiple levels of being for the individual.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Right?

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, you know, like so many people who get chronic Lyme disease, well, one other quick piece I wanted to throw in there that I just, it just kind of dropped into my head is so a lot of people who get bitten by a deer tick and they get Borrelia burgdorferi that bug, that bacteria that causes Lyme disease, about 80% of people seem to get a treatment and they get better pretty quickly. A few of them will relapse and stuff, and we need to keep an eye out for that. But there’s a subgroup of people, so not everybody like you said gets chronic Lyme. ‘Cause I don’t, I wanna be a hope dealer, not like a, not like a dealer of BS, right? Because this is why we have arguments in the medical societies. We don’t know all we, the science isn’t all in yet. And we, clinically we’re seeing people suffering, but there’s some research outta Johns Hopkins that looks like about 20% of the time. You may get persistent Lyme disease right away.

And essentially like when you talk in Lyme terms, we talk a lot about persister forms, different forms of the bug that allow the Lyme spirochete to hide and then come back out later. There’s some newer evidence that suggests that the tick may actually have that happening in them. And they could inject you essentially with persisters right away. And it just so happens that about 80% of people get better from acute Lyme disease without big issues and 20% are still sick and in the research about 20% of the mice that were infected by these ticks were getting what they called early, late Lyme. So they’re essentially getting chronic Lyme disease right away. So it’s all brand new stuff in the last couple of years, but there’s some actual science behind why some people might get sick, you know, and stay sick. But then you go and you go in the Lyme where a lot of people are like, “Hey, we gotta treat parasites before we can treat the Lyme.” And yes, people have parasites. 

And some, like you said, and some need treatment, but what I’ve found is that it’s more like Lyme is an, what I call an emotional, energetic parasite. And it sets up this situation where you got this negative self talk loop that goes on, that is blocking your self healing mechanism that we’re talking about. And so essentially making it impossible for you to heal, right? And so then you look in Lyme disease and you go, okay, a lot of us talk about safety and how to heal. And we talk about Polyvagal theory and you can do fight or flight, or the nervous system can get stuck in freeze. Well, how do we get out of, you know? And then when you look at how you get out of freeze, well, you have to be at understand facial expressions, right. Smiles and all, you know, intonation in someone’s voice and the gestures with their hands. But if you look at what Lyme disease directly does to one’s brain, it impacts the spots in your brain where those things are processed. So the bug itself can cause inflammation and decrease metabolism in the areas that allow you to recognize you’re safe. 

And so then you’re like, okay, well now I have to do all this limbic retraining. And then I have to do all my antibiotics and eventually, poof, a miracle will occur and I’ll heal. So as I dove into this deeper, because I’ve been talking about this for years and I’m like, we’re still stuck, right? We can talk about how to get safe, but we don’t recognize we’re safe. And one of the things we look at like with children, Greg, is you notice how they ever, they play the same movie over and over or the same song over and over and the adults are like, “Please stop.” But it’s familiar, so for the human brain, familiarity equals safety and something that’s unfamiliar is unsafe. And so if we bring this into the Lyme world, when you first get Lyme disease, it’s an unfamiliar, unsafe feeling. 

And you go to the doctor and you get whatever treatment you get and let’s say your symptoms continue. So ultimately these symptoms that were unfamiliar and driving you nuts, become familiar and familiar equals safe. So now I just told you that I need to, I wanna treat you so that you’re no longer sick, but the treatment will make you feel either a flare and then better or better, but better is now unfamiliar. So a lot of people with chronic illness have a hard time getting back onto the other side of healing because they feel unsafe and feeling better is actually unfamiliar and therefore unsafe. So we have. Right?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Wow. Yeah. So we get kind of addicted to the illness. Like that becomes the kind of the norm set point for the person.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right, and it’s evolution, right? It’s not like, ’cause like, it’s not like you start drinking wine and you get hooked on it. It’s like, this is literally evolution. A lotta people feel their bodies have betrayed them. They’re like, oh my body’s not healing. It doesn’t wanna get better, whatever. No, your body’s actually doing everything possible to keep you safe because safe equals alive. So a lot of times when you try to heal, if we go too fast, too hard, or we don’t do the energetic spiritual component of healing, which is a piece of it, ’cause my patients need antibiotics and herbs frequently and the component that we’re talking about right now, if you don’t do all of those in a safe environment, you can’t even change it. So you have to go from illness is unfamiliar to now it’s familiar, so your illness is that. So we talk a lot about that. 

People get in that illness mindset, that’s because your body’s protecting you. You’re not doing anything wrong, your body’s not doing anything wrong. We have to be open to the fact that we need more than just antibiotics and herbs to get you better. And the limbic retraining stuff sometimes is really helpful, but it can be challenging because it’s so hard to do. And that’s where we need to look at these other places where we can start working with our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions and I guess the thing I’ve noticed the most is the simple stuff seems too simple. 

And we get a lot of this, we look outside of our body and what we need to do is think differently and bring it back into our body and become comfortable, so Lyme disease never, the bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, is never fighting nature, never fighting your natural energies. It’s going with the flow, which is why it’s still sticking around. So all of us try to fight the reality or many people do because they’re trying to save themselves, right? That’s good. But what we need to do is get back. If we can get back in the natural flow and not view Lyme as an enemy, but just as something that’s occurring in the moment, then we can get grounded in our bodies and help our bodies do its natural work.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

I love that. You know, we’ve been talking about, we’ve had conversations through time of like getting rid of the war analogy with our bodies and our health of like we’re fighting against this thing. It’s like, well that is a losing battle right out of the gate. So the components, will you speak into safety of like how people feel safe and what that means?

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, I mean, it’s a big topic, right? And you know, the safety to me is like feeling at home and accepted and loved, right? And so one of the things that I personally learned through my healing journey was I always, I believed, I knew inside of me that I had to put me first before I could show up for anybody else in my life. And so then I remember I was dating a girl and she wanted us, you know, we were thinking about getting married and she was just like, “I went to a therapy ’cause like we had alcoholism in the family and et cetera.” And I just wanted to go to college and move to the next level. And she was always like, “I’m glad you’re doing this for us.” I’m like, “No, we’re doing this for me.” Now, and she’s like, “I’m glad you’re doing it for us.” And I’m like, “No, I’m doing it for me. I can’t love you if I don’t love me.” And so I actually broke off a three year relationship because of that one statement.

I mean there are other pieces, but that was summarized everything that didn’t work. And now, you know my amazing wife who knows that I have to love me before I can fully love her, you know? And so as I move forward, I remember over the healing journey though, I went into Lyme with this, right? Then I got Lyme and I knew I had to work on myself. But then one day I go, I keep telling everybody, I put myself first and then other people. But really what I was saying was I use that as it was BS, Greg, I mean, I was like saying like, I mean I took care of myself, but emotionally I was like exercising so I could do this other thing. I was doing this project that I said was for me, but it was really so I could do it for somebody else. And it wasn’t until I really said I’m the most important person and sat in my heart that I really felt safe to allow all that to release and to fully be who I am. And you know, I mean, like I don’t like pretend to be somebody I’m not, but there’s a little bit of that, you know, in the past. 

And so now it’s like, I feel like I can show up as Tom for Jill all day long. And our daughter Talia is this amazing human being, but I still have to take care of me so that I can have the bandwidth and the love to share with her and to me that’s safety and to raise your child in a family where they know that they’re allowed to take care of their own needs first is safety. Because if we go backwards, the nervous system looks at fight, flight or freeze, right? So we talk about parasympathetic and sympathetic. So sympathetic is like our stress reaction that, you know, we’re driving the car, a dog runs in front of our car. We slam on the brakes, we move the steering wheel, we avoid the puppy and our heart’s going like this, we’re sweating and our eyes are all, you know, dilated, but that’s acute, right? 

And so in our, if we get, if that doesn’t get turned off, we stay in a stress state that we all call fight or flight, right? So another way to look at it is the saber tooth tiger, right? We’re hanging out at camp and the saber tooth tiger comes, fight or flight is really like, I’m gonna turn around. I’m gonna fight the saber tooth tiger because I can win or I’m gonna run, but I know that I can get away, right? And so if for some reason, though, I all of a sudden go from, I can win to, I can’t win meaning the saber tooth tiger grabs me in its mouth, what’s the only thing I’ve left to do? Freeze.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

And I played, you know, just like if you ever seen an outdoor cat, right, Greg?

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

And the outdoor cat’s holding the chipmunk. And as soon as it gets bored, it spits it out and it runs away. And that freeze state is really where safety’s such an issue, ’cause you’re at a point where you don’t think you have any chance of survival and that’s where you freeze and you get numb. You’ll see people, their eyes are always down. They start to withdraw socially. And what does that do? That brings your immune function down. So the way out of that is parasympathetic, right? The well, and that’s a piece of parasympathetic, but the other side is joy and rejuvenation and the saber tooth tiger was killed. And now we’re eating him for dinner or something like that. We’re safe, you know? And that’s really the thing. Safety, when you look at it, physiologically is about being able to receive joy, receive gratitude and receive your food and your nourishment and go to sleep and just sleep and not worry about it, right? So it’s that really that calming down and knowing that you’re protected and that you’re around your posse.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

I love that, the receiving, we, we have as a culture, that’s a little bit hard sometimes of wanting to give and do rather than just accept and receive. So that’s lovely.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

That’s what I was doing. I was saying the right thing. I’m taking care of myself and I’m a leader and I’m gonna tell you to take care of yourself first, but was I fully receiving it? It’s such a great bookend to that piece because when I learned to receive for myself, I’m like, the thing that happens with receiving is, like Marianne Williamson has that great quote that I’m gonna paraphrase probably okay, but maybe not great, it’s like, you know, “It’s not our darkness that we’re afraid of, but it’s our light that scares us the most,” right? It’s how amazing we are and how powerful we are. And I am not saying to anybody that you’re causing your Lyme disease, you’re preventing yourself from healing, but you have the power to take the bull by the horn so to speak and really fully embody who you are. Like my hair is standing up. ‘Cause whenever I say that I put little anchors in my life. It used to be the stop sign. 

Anytime I saw red stop sign, I would give myself a practice of becoming present in my body. But now I’ve just decided every time I talk about energy, I’m gonna ground myself in instantaneously and feel it, right? And you can breathe in energy right into your lungs. And as you exhale, just let it go to every single cell. So every moment of your life you’re revitalizing yourself, but you have that much power. And so like the power’s scary because it’s like, oh my God, I have responsibility to heal myself. You do, that’s amazing because when I was sick, I didn’t meet anybody who could help me. And then a friend of mine handed me a DVD of Ashtanga Yoga. 

And I was like, this is not a coincidence. And I went down the rabbit hole of healing myself and learning to be more going back to the way I was as a child. And that’s why I’m so excited about this, Greg, is that we get to have this conversation about yes, and. Like you said earlier, you might need a proper, you definitely need a proper diagnosis and the right treatments. But I was 70 plus percent better before I even met the doctors who knew what was wrong with me and could help me get the medical part done. Most of us think the placebo is what, 30% of what goes on. I’m telling you, it is at least 70% of your healing you can control, which is amazing.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah, that is. So let’s piggyback that into a discussion of comprehensive treatment protocols to help people thrive regardless of where they are on the healing continuum because you know, sometimes I think people can be so ill that, you know, the mental illness comes in here of like not seeing any possibilities or hope and like you mentioned, like a piece of this disease process is that negative loop that keeps us stuck in the illness. So how do you go about that kind of addressing for folks meeting them where they’re at?

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, I think what you just said is the crux of the whole thing, you meet people where they’re at. And I also think as providers, we have to be willing to tell them the truth, right? The truth is best, we know with love and compassion. So let them know how powerful they are and we’re here to help you get there. Because I have a patient commitment agreement where I say, I expect this from you and you expect this from me. And I’ve actually had one person. I was so proud of her. It like, it almost brings a tear to my eye. She wrote me and she said, “I don’t think I can still be your patient because I can’t do this. I can’t, I just physically can’t do this right now.” And I go, that’s not who this is written for. And, you know, because what you’re, you’re reaching out to us for the help and we’re here to help you get there, we’re not abandoning you. We’re actually welcoming you into the family so you can feel safe. And the second that she told me she needed help with something other than the word, the label, she just skyrocketed. Literally all she said was, “I can’t do the things I need to do to heal.” And then ultimately her and I turn that into, we can do it together. And yeah, and I know that’s not exactly what you asked me, but I just, it just.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

No, that’s very powerful though actually, yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Because the thing was, people come, if you will, so the first thing I ask you to do is come tell me what’s going on. Don’t gimme a label. I’ll give you an opportunity to tell me what you think is wrong, but stop calling yourself a Lymie, or a moldy or whatever the hell other label you gave. Like if you were to come to my office, you’re Greg Eckel, this amazing human being who’s got a heart as, you know, bigger than the entire universe who’s out here sharing with people. And if you also have an illness that’s in your life, that’s just a small piece of it, right? It’s just like, what car do you drive? Well, I can change my car. What TV station did you watch? I can change it. So if we look at this thing, I ask people to come in and gimme one to two page summary of all their symptoms. Tell me your story, and then let’s talk about it. Now you can never tell me your story again. Until we rewrite the story or I need some details. 

Because that’s what I was trained in, details. Like pulling out the details we need. So let go of your story, tell it, have it documented, and then just write a new story. And so my job is to get the right lab diag, you know, take your whole story, do your examination, get the right labs and then figure out what’s medically going on. And then we can start treatments. And I request people are open to trying things that maybe they would otherwise would be unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but trusting in my expertise, you know, develop a relationship. So you know that maybe it’s unfamiliar to you, but it’s familiar to me and other people, so that give it a chance. And then we combine things, you know, medications, herbs. I try to be evidence based whenever possible. But a lot of this is clinical, you know, we have lots of clinical experience. The science is catching up and then some of it I don’t do as much dietary change as a lot of people. I don’t, I mean, if you need it, I do it, but it’s not a, there’s no hard, fast rules for me other than we need to have this conversation like you and I are having right now. And when we have that, we can figure out what you need the most. 

And then when we mention the different prongs of treatment, we look at all the, you know, maybe we talk about antimicrobials and we talk about the immune system. We talk about the mental, emotional, spiritual. We might dial one of those up more than another, right? So if you have acute Lyme disease, I’m likely to dial up the antibiotics or the antibiotic herbs. But the longer it’s been, maybe the more we have to focus over here on the mental, emotional, spiritual side first. And we just work on that. And what I say to people is it’s literally like, think about the thoughts you have about yourself throughout the day. You know? ‘Cause I love meditation, right? You and I were talking about meditation before we started. And I use a very, my friend, Sinclair and I created a meditation approach that we use in chronic illness because meditation is, for chronic illness may not be the same for everybody else, ’cause it’s hard to get started often. But the definition of meditation I love the most is to become familiar with, not to focus on something, but to become familiar with. 

And what I challenge my patients to do and I support them in doing is become familiar with the state that you wanna live in. And then if you look at a master of meditation or a master of whatever, sort of mental science we’re talking about, I’ve talked to many a guru people and I’ve always asked them, “What makes you a master?” And I go, “Is it that you’re better than everybody else? Like you just, you’re always in bliss, right? You’re always in samadhi. You’re like right on the, you know, you’re on.” They’re like, “No, I’m a normal human being.” Like everybody you listen to, Dispenza, you listen to Sadhguru, you listen to anybody you can name. I could just rattle off names all day long. They’ve all said this in one form or another, the difference between like the masses and the master is that when the master goes away from the state they wanna be in, they notice it a little more quickly and they get back on track a little more quickly. That’s easy to do. So let’s start to notice what we’re thinking. 

Is your day a negative meditation where you tell yourself how you’re not good enough And you’re sick with Lyme because all you do is look for Lyme and research? Or you coming over here and you go, “Hey, I did my research time, but now it’s time to focus on what I want my life to look like and how amazing it is that I’m living and breathing and I have friends and then, and it’s not that you don’t have a negative meditation part of your day. It’s that you just continually bring yourself back when you notice it. And lo and it’s so it’s habit. It’s like Lyme, when you first had it, you didn’t like it. Now it’s like your a good old buddy, ’cause it’s just there. So what I want you to do is go, hey, let’s be aware of what’s there and put more in of what you want. And I mean, it’s just, it’s a simple place to start, but people think they have to like meditation is like, sit down and stop your mind. Yoga is put your legs behind your head and sit in Lotus. It’s, no, yoga is union.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Union with yourself for God’s sake. Because when you have union with yourself, then you know what God means. Whether without all the religious, you know, baggage that comes with it.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Sure.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

You understand, you understand the statements that Greg makes, right? Where Greg’s telling us about connecting with the whole universe and our love and our heart. ‘Cause it’s like, when you connect so deeply with yourself, like I said earlier, like a lot of people try to like get floaty and they love the floating and outside. But a lot of people with trauma of which chronic illness is a real trauma physically, especially mentally and emotionally, where you go to your doctor and your doctor invalidates your experience of your life. You go to another doctor, same thing. Somebody tells you, you don’t have Lyme disease and your other doctor’s a quack. And it’s like, you’re like, oh my God, maybe your family members go, “You’re not really sick.” Maybe you’ve lost a spouse or a partner. I’ve had people who forgot, they were so sick, they forgot to renew their teacher’s license. All they had to do is send in like 40 bucks. 

They lost everything they went to school for. Their whole professional identity was now gone because they weren’t allowed to renew it because they missed the date, ’cause they forgot. This is real trauma, right? And so a lot of people with trauma don’t need to go out because you start to disassociate essentially from your body, you don’t like that energy. You need to ground first. So you ground into your body, infinity goes deep, man. And then it connects to that universal love. So a lot of my people need to do more, bringing it back into their body and getting comfortable and familiar with how the energy and the love in there. And granted, I mean, this is not like an overnight thing. So I mean, I we’ve created a, you know, a thrive with Lyme blueprint program that specifically does this just because you can’t finish it all in a half an hour, but it’s a starting place, right? There’s so much hope and so much power in who you are.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Ah, thank you for that, Dr. Tom. So here at the kinda the finish line of our conversation, we wanna put folks into action and you spoke into these, but I want you to give ’em maybe some exercise around grounding and gratitude that they can just jumpstart and take a little step in that direction today.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah. Thank you so much for that opportunity. So I mean, one of the simplest ways to ground is to, you know, just kind of take a moment and take a few deep breaths, you know, allow yourself to receive, give yourself a breath, you know? And so you can inhale an exhale and just feel what it feels like and then, you know, as you on your next exhale, if you just allow the eyeball, you know, the eyelids to drop and close, you can sit there and then as you breathe in, breathe in energy to your lungs and then as you exhale, allow that energy to kind of go to all the cells of your body and then you can just, as you’re sitting here and breathing and getting energized, feel your pelvis seated in the chair and you can just allow that to get heavier and heavier and just allow your attention to go deeper and deeper into the planet and just go down and see what it feels like. 

And I almost like imagine like my whole body is just, all that energy I just breathe in is now just like a tube going all the way down to the center of the planet, whatever that means for you and just allow yourself to feel that you’re supported by the chair or the floor and allow it to, your mind to just go deeper. And it’s a simple way to be grounded and you can actually open your eyes and still keep feeling of the ground and again, it’s like allow yourself to feel your butt or if you’re standing, feel your feet. And then when you’re really aware of that, just let it go deeper. And it’s a simple way to get started. And the other part too, Greg is if you, a lot of people don’t feel like they have a lot of wins when they’re dealing with chronic Lyme and other things. So one of the nice exercise I like to do is at the end of my day, I’ll ground, right? And there’s so many ways to do this. And if you’re really in your energy, you can just feel your root chakra and just let it drop. But your breath is the guide here and gravity. 

Mother Earth is supporting us. So then at the end of your day, give yourself three to four minutes, no more, grab a piece of paper, I think those things still exist and a pen. And what you do is you write down three wins you’ve had from the day, whatever ones come to your mind and maybe you’re so sick that wins don’t feel good, but maybe something happened that wasn’t so great that you can learn a lesson from and that’s a win. And so you write down just three lines. And a lot of people are like, “Well, I didn’t have any big wins.” I’m like, “For me, the smaller the win, usually the better, because you’re starting to learn to cherish this, you know, small stuff in your life.” And I always say, “Hey, if Lyme, if you get 10% better from Lyme disease, and then you say, it’s not good enough, if the universe gave you 10% better health, and you said, screw you, that’s not enough, why would it trust you with more? 

So let’s start to really savor the nuances. So three wins for the day. And now what I want you to do is on the next three things you’re gonna write down are three wins you’re gonna have for tomorrow. And the reason we’re doing it at bedtime is we savor our day and the three wins for tomorrow, a lot of people are like, as soon as they’re gonna program like a win for tomorrow, like the conscious mind goes, oh, all the reasons that’s not gonna happen. So right before bed, if I write down tomorrow, next thing I know I’m gonna go to bed and I’m gonna, at some point, I’ll fall asleep and I’m gonna disassociate from my conscious mind and now my subconscious, which when it’s disassociated from your conscious become super conscious, you get to have the universe or God, whatever words resonate with you, come in and start to pre-plan in your subconscious mind, how you’re gonna get these wins. And now you wake up in the next morning and 30 seconds read all six things and you put it away. 

And now what happens in two or three days, you’re gonna start seeing all these changes in your life. And when you get back to the evening, now you’re gonna start to sit there with these wins from the day and naturally, without even trying, you’re gonna start to feel gratitude. You’re gonna go, oh my God. And then I got to the point three or four days in this great. I was writing 10 or 20 things down. I had to stop myself and only write three. And that’s what I really want people to get. Because now what we just tricked you in the doing was increasing your heart rate variability, by going into gratitude and all of you who were saying a second ago, “Well, I don’t sleep well,” you’re gonna start sleeping better a few days later. So you do delayed gratification here or maybe it’s a week or two, but because you’re gonna be putting yourself in that parasympathetic healing, joy state before you go to bed, which makes it easier to sleep. And once you get to sleep, it’ll be deeper. Now you’re gonna start to wake up with energy. You’re gonna sleep deep, you’re gonna detoxify your brain and this is how powerful you are. A really simple practice, it’s not as, and that’s the thing. Simplicity is what really leads to these huge results.

Greg Eckel, ND, LAc

Love it. Dr. Tom Moorcroft, thank you so much.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Thanks for having me.