141: Raelan Agle's ME/CFS recovery journey & Insights

00:00:00 Chazmith: Welcome to Our Power Is Within podcast. I'm your host, Chazmith, and my mission for this podcast is to inspire you to take your power back and realize that you are the healer that you have been looking for all along. We are all capable of healing in mind, in body, and in soul. And before I introduce today's guest, I was excited to share with you that this episode is brought to you by CFS School, founded by Jen Mann and Karden Rabin. If you're not familiar with Jen and Karden, check out recent episode 119 where I pick their brains, hear about their personal healing journeys, and discover how CFS Schools birthed. So CFS School, for those of you who aren't familiar yet, is a nervous system healing program including an integrative brain retraining approach, polyvagal therapeutics trauma resolution techniques such as somatic, experiencing tools, inner child work, and parts work. It's designed to help guide support empower you on your self healing journey to heal from a variety of mind body disorders. And some of these disorders include CFS, Fibromyalgia, POTS, Autoimmune Disorder, sensitivities and more. There is a wonderful self study option that is perfect for people who love to go at their own pace. While the program is set up in twelve modules, I personally found it super supportive for me to spend more time on certain weeks and modules where I really wanted the extra practice. However, if you're someone who likes the guidance and the additional live support, you can also sign up for a free discovery call and be ready to sign up for the next live cohorts. Links in the show notes.

00:01:44 Chazmith: Today, we have such a fun guest. Many of you might already know her really well through her YouTube channel, which has been an incremental and valuable resource in the healing community, especially for those who have suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome. Her name is Raelan Agle. Raelan lived with chronic fatigue syndrome for 10 years before healing fully, and she now lives an abundant rich full life and uses her YouTube channel to help spread this powerful message that healing is possible for all of us. She has authored a book titled Finding Freedom: Escaping the Prison of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I think that whether you've already been familiar with her channel or not, you will find this a fun and engaging conversation as she brings up some really important and powerful insights for all of us. So please enjoy.

00:02:38 Chazmith: Raelan. Thank you so much for being here with me today. 

00:02:42 Raelan: Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having me. I just love your podcast and everything that you're doing and I'm excited to be a part of it. 

00:02:49 Chazmith: Yeah, I'm really excited too. So talking to you briefly before we get started. Right now, you started your YouTube channel about almost three years ago you said? 

00:03:01 Raelan: I think so. I'd have to look up the date, but it's somewhere in that ballpark. Yeah. 

00:03:06 Chazmith: Okay. Yeah, and I started my podcast almost three years ago too. August will be three years. But I wanted to kind of just talk to you a little bit about your experience through doing the YouTube channel and doing all these interviews. Cuz it's had to have been, we are well over a hundred interviews at this point, right? 

 00:03:22 Raelan: I am, yeah. Yes. 

00:03:25 Chazmith: Yeah. Okay. So when you started the YouTube channel, were you still dealing with chronic symptoms or were you already fully recovered and that was the motivator for you to start?

00:03:36 Raelan: I was already fully recovered and yeah, that was the motivation to start. 

00:03:40 Chazmith: Okay. And when you, going through all these interviews and just everything you learned through your own healing journey, when you look back now, do you feel like you have a deeper understanding of how you got sick and how it spiraled into a 10 year illness? 

00:04:00 Raelan: Really good question and oh my goodness, yes. You know, I came out of this like most of us or all of us probably, that go through these sorts of, you know, chronic health challenge journeys. We read a lot, we become really well educated and aware about our health and we figure a lot out. And by the time I recovered I had learned so much. I wrote a book about it and just kind of explaining my whole experience and what I did to recover and my understanding of it. And all of that still holds up. But I'd say virtually every person I interview I get a new little insight into my own journey and kind of the whole bigger picture of things For sure. 

00:04:37 Chazmith: Yeah. What was your inspiration to actually start your channel? 

00:04:41 Raelan: It started with, cuz I've had such, I mean chronic fatigue syndrome or Emmy we're referring to it as has been a part of my life for so long because people who follow my channel know my mother had it as well. So she got sick when I was about five and was sick for her entire adult life until her passing about a year before I got sick. So, and then I was sick for about 10 years. So chronic fatigue syndrome was such a big thing and it was such a hopeless journey for my mother and for me during my time I hadn't heard of firstly anybody recovering until the end. I heard of one person. But so when I finally realized that I was almost out of it, have a story to tell here, like this is a story that needs to be told cuz I knew that there are people all over the world facing this and all of us had this feeling like recovery wasn't possible. And so when I saw that I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm actually almost recovered. I actually am recovered. It was just this burning thing, like it wasn't even an option.

00:05:37 Raelan: I'm like I must get this out yet there however I can, I think a lot of us do this sort of bargaining. But when I first got sick I so desperate and I was trying all these things and I made this desperate plea with the universe. I'm like you don't have to heal me, just help me. Show me the path, help me find the puzzle pieces and put this together and I'll do everything that I can to share this information with other people. So that was a part of it as well like okay, I just, you know, I felt it was the right thing to do to put that information out there in case it might help somebody. 

00:06:07 Chazmith: Yeah. Well because like you said at the time that you were going through this, you didn't know anybody who had also healed. So to have that experience of gaining your health back and then sharing it with other people, it gives that hope to anybody else who's out there googling information on MECFS when they get the diagnosis rather than all the doom and gloom, something like your channel could pop up and give somebody that inspiration that they need. 

00:06:32 Raelan: Yeah and I realized after I published my book that I thought that was the best way cuz my number one go-to when I was sick was reading books. So like, okay, I'll write a book and then I put it out there but nobody knew who I was. I was an unknown author, like nobody could even find it. It was worried so deep in the search results and so I'm like okay, I need to embrace maybe a more modern way of sharing information and I was terrified of YouTube so terrified. I was telling you it took me about six months of convincing myself to start the channel but I just... I could see that that's where so many people were going for information. So I'm like okay, I gotta do it. I gotta be brave. This is probably a more effective way to get information out. 

00:07:10 Chazmith: Yeah, yeah that makes so much sense. I mean I feel like YouTube these days is kind of like a Google search, right? Like a lot of us go to YouTube and search things before we even go to Google sometimes. 

00:07:20 Raelan: Absolutely. Yeah. 

00:07:22 Chazmith: Yeah. And so for you, what was some of your story like? Cuz I know that you've probably shared tons of it over your channel, but there's probably people listening who you are nude for them. And so give a little brief synopsis on what were some of the key elements of healing or ways that supported healing for you? 

00:07:40 Raelan: For me it was the time that I was sick for about 10 years. I see it in sort of three phases. So the first couple of years I was the sickest and I threw everything I had at it and I went, you know, through conventional medicine, through alternative medicine I was taking a hundred pills a day of supplements, you know spending thousands of dollars on testing and had a holistic type doctor who was treating me. And it's tough cuz in those first couple years I did achieve some success with my recovery. It was a small amount, I don't know, maybe I got a third of the way there and because I did so many things at once, I really wasn't sure what was attributing to that. And after about two years of this, of spending every dollar I had and every dollar I didn't have and every ounce of my focus going into getting better and reading every book that I could find on healing from virtually any condition I was reading about books about cancer and just like if anyone had anything to offer and I just felt like I'd run out of options and it just seemed like there was nothing left to try.

00:08:42 Raelan: And I also felt very burnt out from just being all in on this trying to get better and that being my whole life and I was just miserable. So I kind of... I hate to say that I gave up on recovering but I just... I don't know, I just stopped. I stopped everything, I stopped all the supplements, I stopped trying and for quite a few years after that I just sort of was in survival mode and then I got to a point where I realized every single day was hard. My condition had improved somewhat but I never had one day that was easy. I always had symptoms, I always was stressing about how I was gonna get through things. So I just got to a point where I kind of went all in and I'm like okay, I gotta do this. So this is where I saw the biggest results in my healing and it was pulling from things that I'd seen promise over the years hadn't really given it a proper go.

00:09:35 Raelan: And essentially, it boils down to things that were supporting my body's own ability to heal. I didn't go through doctors, I had given up on all of that and I just started just really trying to do everything I could to support my own body like I'd seen. So I was very scared of exercise cuz a lot of people with this condition get worse. And every time I tried to exercise even gently for five minutes I would crash hard and it would just be horrible. But I'd had some experiences where I was doing gentle activity that I enjoyed and for small amounts of time, and I could manage it and I was slowly getting stronger so I had belief in some sort of movement to help me. So I started a gradually increasing, not an exercise program, but it was one minute a day of just like gentle movement in my living room.

00:10:23 Raelan: You know, exercise was probably a bit of a stretch. And then just every week I added on about another minute and then I started completely cleaned up my diet. My gut health was a mess. All my microbiomes were a mess. I think I was getting all these different infections. So I brought in a lot more plant foods for me that was helpful. I started eating fermented foods, you know, with the naturally occurring probiotics and just my gut health completely transformed and that was massive. And focusing on all the things that we, I think take for granted or think that they're not gonna have that much ability to help us heal. But just really, really getting serious about sleep. Like sleep at all costs cuz my sleep was really bad so I had to do a lot of things to turn that around. 

00:11:06 Raelan: Things like getting outside and getting some sunlight and being in nature and drinking lots of water and working on my mental health and my stress and you know, doing therapy and journaling and meditating and just a whole mind body like support and ultimately the combination of those things really. I mean month after month I was seeing myself getting better and better and better and better. So I knew it was working and that just kept the motivation going and eventually I did get there. 

00:11:33 Chazmith: Wow. So you started out with one minute of activity a day and each week you increased by about a minute? 

00:11:39 Raelan: Yeah. 

00:11:40 Chazmith: Wow. 

00:11:40 Raelan: Generally speaking, I'd have to listen to my body. Some weeks I wouldn't increase, I'd just do the, you know, if I was at two minutes and the next week I didn't feel ready, I'd stay at two minutes and sometimes it was every second day I had to be flexible and kind of listen to my body and it always did give me a little bit of a symptom flare but I came to accept that as okay and I kept it within a manageable level so that it wasn't impacting my ability to continue doing the movement. And then every week it took more and more to bring on those symptoms. So where one minute used to bring it on, now it took two minutes than it took three minutes, then it took 5, 10, 15. So I was just slowly showing my body that activity was safe and getting it used to it again and it yeah, it really helped. 

00:12:21 Chazmith: Wow. Yeah. So you really had to take it down to like the most foundational, I think that's a thing that I know I've probably not done a good job at. I had a conversation with another person in the community just the other day and I think he was saying something like, yeah I just can't get my body to break past like I can't get the exercise. Like same thing you were saying, he just would keep having symptoms flare from it. And I think he was saying he did something like only, I don't know if it was three sets of like 10 push ups or something and I was like, well as we're talking about this, like maybe it's one, maybe it's just one pushup a day for however long it takes until you're no longer having a reaction to that one pushup and then maybe it's two and then maybe it's three, not even three set. Just three. And I think that is the problem that I face many times through this recovery journey is not actually being willing to do little enough and going back into those old habits or I think because of what I used to be able to do, this seems like it should be modified enough but then it's not. So I love this cuz you're literally, oh let's just do exactly what you do and if you get a flare, but do it until you don't get any symptoms and then add up from there.

00:13:38 Raelan: Yeah, that was for me for years, it took me a long time to figure out how to think small enough. Like I needed to start with so little that it felt like it couldn't possibly be helping anything like this is ridiculous. And many of us were really active before we got sick. So three sets of 10 pushups feels like that's starting small. But in this state for me that was kind of my approach prior to that. And then it would always make me feel worse and I would be, I'm discouraged and kind of give up on it. So yeah, I've like start so small, so gentle, so ridiculous. It's just like what am I even doing? But let's just start here in a space and build it up.

00:14:16 Chazmith: And you did that place and built it up and you did that for years you said? 

00:14:18 Raelan: Yeah, I think it took me about a year to get up to an hour a day at the gym pushing as hard as I wanted to, like full on workouts. So...

00:14:327 Chazmith: In the end that yields a better result. Like it seems like oh this seems so insignificant to start with a minute, how am I ever gonna get to it can seem like how you ever get over here with only a minute right now of very gentle movement. But when you can do it every day over time and build, I feel like that's gonna get us a lot further than the do a little bit too much crash, do nothing. Finally do a little bit too much crash, do nothing like that just kind of keeps you stuck. 

00:14:56  Raelan: Yeah, yeah. I mean it's really the thing that we talk about with pacing, with brain training and teaching our body that things are safe. It was just doing things in a way that felt safe and that getting out of that boom bus cycle, cuz I'd been in that for years. Push, push, push, crash, get way worse maybe even have months where it takes me to come back, push, push, crash, push, push, crash. So that concept of pacing, even though I didn't have the word for it at the time, cuz I wasn't in tune with this community, it was very much what I was doing and it wasn't pacing just to live within my limitations but using pacing to help myself to slowly increase activity and get better.

00:15:33 Chazmith: Yeah, that's amazing. At what point were you in your journey where you were like I'm healed. Oh wow, I'm healed. 

00:15:41  Raelan: It was after that last big push when I started the exercise and all that stuff, about a year and a half in I thought I'm like I'm here cuz I was doing all the things. I was traveling, I was working out, I had a very busy life, I had social life, yeah, lots going on. But then I started trying to run again and starting to run felt harder than it should have and I had to take a similar approach to running that I took to exercise. It almost felt like starting from scratch. So it was like, I mean, I didn't have to start as small, but I would run one minute, walk nine, I did like 10 minute intervals and then the next week I'd run one minute walk, eight minutes and just slowly built it back. So I'd say after about two years of that I was fully, fully like no more symptoms that I could really directly link to CFS were gone. But within a year of that I was really doing well. But then two years to really fully say okay I'm back to like back to my pre sickness kind of health. 

00:16:38 Chazmith: Yeah, I love that you brought up the running cuz I think that's really helpful for people who will be listening to because how easy I could see it becoming if say you were on this upward trajectory like you did and then you incorporate something like running or whatever your sport is and all of a sudden your body's kind of resistant to it again, your brain's resistant. I could see that creating a lot of fear or stories in our head that were not better, were not recovered. And your example's a perfect example of no, it's just that particular movement for some reason still doesn't feel safe to the brain and just let's go back to what we know works, keep doing the other things and then increment this. 

00:17:16 Raelan: And you'd asked about new insights about my journey or just about these journeys of all of us in general. And at the time when I was doing cuz I started with the strength training and then I moved into the running and I thought of it as a general kind of reconditioning of my body, which to some extent it absolutely was cuz I had been inactive for many years. But now I understand the brain training component of what I was doing by that slow, slow, slow. Showing my body it was safe, tiny little increments at a time, which I didn't understand at all at the time I was doing it, but I didn't know I was doing it. So I see now how important that is. And had I had, I think personally a lot of these brain training tools and nervous system management tools that are available, I could have done it all probably even faster had I been had those tools to implement at the same time as well. So I very much see the mind body, the brain body connection in all of this for sure. 

00:18:08 Chazmith: Yeah. Yeah. You were just intuitively doing it without even knowing that it had a name. That's awesome. And so when you first started the YouTube channel, was it mostly just the idea that you were gonna get this possibility of healing out there and share your story? Or did you instantly go into interviewing and start looking for other people who had stories to share? 

00:18:27 Raelan: No, absolutely not. I started out very naively thinking that just my story had a whole lot of power and of course all of our stories do. But the more I got in touch with our community, the more I realized how individual all of our journeys are and my specific formula wasn't by far gonna be everyone else's specific formula. So I thought okay. And I started to see quickly that the biggest response people were having to my story was not necessarily that that's what they needed to heal, but they got hope. So I thought, okay, we need to get more stories out. And I'm like, I'm gonna search. I'm like, virtually no one recovers from this so I don't know where I'm gonna find these people. I thought I'm gonna find maybe five people and then I'll run out, but I'm gonna find them. And so I searched online and searching the hashtags and just trying to find people sharing their story and I started sharing them and there was such a good response to it.

00:19:16 Raelan: And then I quickly realized that people were recovering all over the place. I can't keep up, like I'm booked out months in advance now. I always have a wait list. Like there are just so many people that are recovered and that's not what most of us feel when we're in this. It feels very hopeless. So yeah, it quickly became very much, it felt like one of the most important things I could do was just get as many stories out there as possible. 

00:19:39 Chazmith: Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. It's amazing that when you're looking for it and then you find all these people coming out of the woodwork, it's such a better than everybody coming out talking about not healing. It's like no, there's actually all these people out there that are healing and it's possible. So what are some of the biggest takeaways that you've personally discovered because I know you were healed from your illness going into the podcast or the YouTube channel, but what have some of the takeaways been that you've learned through doing hundreds of interviews? 

00:20:09 Raelan: One of the biggest ones and one of the greatest ones I think is that, cause I used to think, I don't know if this information is still floating around, but I used to read about chronic fatigue syndrome. The longer you were sick, the more hopeless it was. Recovery needs to happen early. So with each passing year, I felt more and more hopeless and my mother was the same, like we're past the point of no return. And by interviewing people I started seeing that... I've interviewed many people that had been sick for decades, severely unwell. Some of them bedbound and then we're able to fully 100% recover. So that's been a massive takeaway for me that I think from what I've seen, there is no hopeless case. And these are people with all sorts of triggers and onsets and varieties of symptoms and living in different countries and in different stuff and they are able to recover. So that right there I think is amazing. 

00:20:58 Chazmith: Yeah, so don't limit yourself because you've been sick for decades. 

00:21:02 Raelan: Yeah. Or because you had a specific thing that triggered your onset or like I think we all have these worries and these fears understandably that maybe I'm some unique hopeless case but I've just talked to so many different people with so many different situations that have been able to fully recover. So that's a really hopeful thing. Another one too that I've noticed is just people being open-minded is really important because many people had to change how they think about how their body works, about what healing looks like. A lot of us were brought up through society, through our doctors, through our education system with certain ideas about how the body works and how healing works. And you know, we hear this a lot but a lot of us were waiting for the surgery or the pill or whatever that was gonna fix us. 

00:21:48 Raelan: And for most of us, that is not what got us there. And I interviewed this one Australian guy named Nick, he's just amazing. Called himself a blokey bloke. First thing he did when he felt better was chop down a tree. He said like I had to start learning about feelings and self-compassion and he's like, I had to look up what some of these things even were. I didn't even understand them. So just how much perhaps not putting any blame, none of us did anything to deserve this. But a lot of people share how they see their illness actually started before they got sick. So many people, and I imagine you've come across something similar, really drove themselves hard. We're overachiever, perfectionist, type A types or really caregivers and putting everyone else before themselves. And with that comes a lot of harsh self-talk and stress and just being constantly in a state of overdrive. So yeah, it's just being open-minded to thinking about maybe there are things that I am not giving enough credit to that could be helping me to heal things like meditation and self-compassion and whatever that might be. 

00:22:56 Chazmith: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So in all these interviews, did you ever see common seams amongst people that were the most supportive in healing? Like you said with Nick, he had to learn about self-compassion, but for you you had to start with one minute of gentle exercise a day. You really worked on your nutrition and your gut biome. But do you see in general some of the say top three things that you most commonly see are non-negotiables that people usually end up experiencing or implementing or shifting or changing in their life in order to heal?

00:23:33 Raelan: From the people that I've interviewed? So this is just my perspective of what I've been seeing, but I've seen it come into generally three sort of buckets of things that people address. The first one virtually everyone seems to need to address the second one most and the third sum. And the first one is that nervous system component addressing the stress fight or flight, the self-compassion, all of that. Like people need to get a hold of that and get themselves into a state where they can actually heal. I think about my first couple years being sick when I was doing all of those things and spending all of that money and some of it could have had really good potential but I was so stressed out and severely depressed and scared and just really terrified of my future all of the time. So I see now that in that state it's virtually impossible for you to get a lot of healing done. So that's the first one that virtually everyone I talked to shares. 

00:24:26 Raelan: And then the second one very much ties into the first one but at some level addressing the neurological component, so call it brain training or whatever you wanna call it, but understanding that at least for some of us, a lot of these symptoms, although they're very physical and very real in our body are coming from the brain. And whether that's doing brain training programs and this very much ties into the first one, they're interconnected, they're not separate things. But whether it's doing a gradually increasing exercise program, whether it's finding a diet that you believe in, it just seems to be finding something that you feel safe and just something that puts you at ease with things and finding new ways to self-talk. Even though I wasn't doing a brain training program when I was doing my exercise, there was a lot of self-talk every day that these symptoms are here, it's fine, they'll be gone, it's a normal part of healing, they're not hurting me, don't freak out. So that piece seems to be very much important for a lot of the people that I talk to.

00:25:26 Raelan: And then the third one is those, which is some people I talk to, but not everybody is addressing those things outside of the brain and the nervous system like underlying infections, mold exposure, heavy metals or gut health diet, all of that. So some people very much need to have a multifaceted approach when they're attacking their recovery, attacking not the best word and supporting their recovery. But not everybody. Like some people like my diet was fine, I didn't have any mold exposure, I didn't have any of those things. Some people really just do the nervous system or do the brain training stuff and they're a hundred percent there and other people are like, I did those things, they helped but I also needed to fix my gut, fix those other things.

00:26:10 Chazmith: Right, yeah, yeah, makes so much sense. So, because it seems like there was a point in your journey where you did get really in tune, you just talked about how you even had to talk to yourself and say these symptoms are there but they're part of the healing, they're okay maybe you said you read a lot of books that was your way to get the information in. What were some of the books that really had a lasting impact and that you feel really contributed and supported your healing and helped you get into that mindset where you knew what steps to start taking? 

00:26:41 Raelan: It's interesting because there aren't a lot of books that stand out to me, although I'm sure they all contributed to some degree, which is one of the reasons I decided to write a book. I was trying to write the book that I felt didn't exist, like what I would've wanted. Everything had little bits about taking care of your body and just generally being healthier. So that was helpful. Later, later, later on towards the end of my journey, I'd been sick for probably maybe seven years or something. I read  books. I didn't know who he was at the time, but by Toby Morrison from CFS Health over in Australia. I don't even think it's even in print anymore, but it was just telling his recovery story from CFS and he did it through exercise, a gradually increasing exercise program like what I did. So that combined with my own experience of what I'd seen in my life of small amounts of movement when it felt safe showing me prop. So really got me on that path of using movement for myself. And he was the only person on the planet I'd ever heard of recovering. So before that it was just blind faith. So now I had one person.  So it's hard to say there's a lot of great books out there, but in the end it was just a lot of more experimenting and listening to my body and yeah.

00:27:54 Chazmith: Yeah. But how did you get to a place do you think, where you started to not feel the fear around the symptoms? Was it just the evidence that they would maybe come but then they'd go again and over time? 

00:28:05 Raelan: Yeah, it was kind of the whole proof is in the pudding thing. I guess in the beginning it was a little bit of blind faith, although I had in the past seeing myself get a little bit stronger. So it was just experimenting those first few weeks and trusting the process and then really almost every single week I got a little bit better. So that right there makes you more at peace with the process. It still sucks. It was brutal. It was probably the hardest thing I've done in my life that year, year and a half, two years, whatever you wanna call it was not easy. But seeing the progress kind of put me at peace with all of it and have faith that what I was doing, I was on the right track and it wasn't of course linear, you know, it was a little experimenting and ups and downs, but overall it was going the right direction. So yeah.

00:28:50 Chazmith: Yeah. Was there a point in your journey where you really did feel confident that you were going to heal? 

00:28:57 Raelan: I would say at that end, when I started that year and a half, two years within a month, and maybe it was naive but maybe it was just determination or stubbornness, but I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna get there. I'd given myself a year.  I had determined that I would be fully better in a year, which ended up taking a little bit longer than that. But yeah, I just... I can't really explain it. If I had seen all the recovery stories that are out there now, like I feel like it would be more justified this belief I had in recovery. But I just decided I was gonna get there and I probably had moments where I lost that feeling but I would pick myself back up quickly. I wasn't a hundred percent always like, no I'm gonna do this. But for the most part I felt really, really confident about it. Yeah. 

00:29:40 Chazmith: Yeah. That's awesome. And I was asking that just because the fact that you've had so much familiarity with it and then with the situation with your mother and just watching her spend almost her whole life sick and not get better and then you to be in that downward spiral for many years, I think that's really amazing that you were able to get yourself to that place of belief. And I'm sure that belief really helped you on that one to two year journey upward. 

00:30:05 Raelan: I think denial also comes into play. When I first got sick I had no idea what was wrong with me even though I should have known better than just about anyone what was happening. But I refused to believe that I had what my mother had. So that probably held me back in the beginning cuz I'm like, no it's something else. It kind of hurt me in the beginning but then I guess maybe that same denial that okay she couldn't recover but I'm going to whatever it was, it worked out in the end. 

00:30:31 Chazmith: Yeah, it's awesome. I think that's really great. Okay, so nowadays, what is a typical day like for you? Do you have routines or rituals that you still do? Like is there anything you do for your nervous system to sustain its regulation or do you regularly journal still or what are some of the things that you do for your own self-care these days?

00:30:54 Raelan: I do. I have some non-negotiables. My self-care isn't perfect. When I got better I had this naive notion that I was gonna be just this picture perfect image of self-care for the rest of my life and I would, it's a challenging thing. We all have old habits from before we were sick and they come back and those overachievers, you know, whatever you wanna call it type stuff is there. But I do have things that, cuz I have a very busy life because I work full-time in a job that has nothing to do with any of this and then have my YouTube channel and I do online courses and weekly newsletters and all that stuff. So it really is like having two jobs. So it takes a pretty strict self-care routine to keep my head afloat. So some of the things for me that are really important is a morning routine.

00:31:38 Raelan: It took me a long time to work up to this but I have an almost two hour morning routine that I do every day before I start work. That was the dream that I was building up towards, but it's just my first two hours are completely for myself. So I get up, I have some lemon water, I do a little bit of gentle stretching, I play with my puppy for a couple minutes. It makes me really happy to just give them belly rubs in the morning and it's just, it's what gets me out of bed I think. Oh belly rubs, puppy kisses. I can get up cuz I really don't wanna get up ever. And then after that I do meditation, I do about 25-minute meditation. I took a meditation course through Soma Meditation. I highly recommend it. It has changed my life. So I do that and then from there I go outside and I take my dog for a walk and just to take him for a walk but also to get some early morning sun cuz it really helps with my sleep at night. 

00:32:30 Raelan: I used to do it even before I had the dog. I would go out just for a walk by myself. And then after that I go to the gym. I have a trainer I use through this app called future fitness, which is also amazing. And then once that's done then I sit down, I grab my coffee, which is mostly decaf. I do about five minutes of journaling every day before I start my day. And then, and then that's it. And I start work. I do intermittent fasting so I don't eat until later in the morning. Something people always ask about. So I say the biggest thing that I do is just that how I start my day sets the tone for the rest of the day and prioritizing self-care and putting myself first.  goes a really long way. 

00:33:07 Chazmith: Yeah. How early do you have to wake up to do all that before work? 

00:33:10 Raelan: Well I work from home so that helps. So I log on to work at eight 30. So I got… I am out of bed at six 30. 

00:33:17 Chazmith: Okay. Yeah that sounds like a really beautiful, very loving routine to have in the morning. 

00:33:23 Raelan: Yeah, it took a while to get there but it goes a long way. And then just little things throughout the day that I've learned from all the amazing people that I've interviewed about just keeping myself in a calmer state before I let myself get totally revved up all day and then at the end of the day just be this frazzled kind of blah. I actually do a second meditation in the afternoon as well. So that is like another little reset. And then I do things like I have little statements I say to myself like a big one for me is just asking myself the question as many times a day as I can think of it. What does self-care look like for me right now? And I have it as a screensaver on my phone. I have a reminder on my laptop. So I just catch myself even right now in this moment just be like pause. What does self-care look like for me right now? Am I nervous? Am I putting too much pressure on myself? Do I need to just take a deep breath? And even just by asking yourself the question, it just causes you to pause and kind of ground yourself and take a breath. And even that in itself is really powerful. And then just see what you need in that moment. Am I tired? Do I need some water? Do I need to unplug from digital devices for a bit? You know, whatever it might be.

00:34:30 Chazmith: Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I love that. Something a little fun thing I do when I'm doing interviews and on the computer too. But especially the interviews cuz yeah I can be nervous or I can be worried about like a question or so focused, making sure I'm catching everything. If I do that little quick check in I'm like, oh yeah, put my hand on my belly and I just like will do some conscious breasts right into my hand in my lower belly, you know? And that always just kind of helps regulate me, just bring me back to calm and set something. 

00:35:00 Raelan: I love that. 

00:35:02 Chazmith: That's something I'll do sometimes. But it's funny cause sometimes I'll catch myself doing that and then you know how when you're kind of regulating or you have that shift you can yawn or sigh, I'll catch myself yawning. I'm like, you know trying to hide it on camera. 

00:35:18 Raelan: Am I boring you? 

00:35:19 Chazmith: Yeah Like I swear you're not boring. I'm just, you know, breathing into my belly and calm and everything down. 

00:35:27 Raelan: It's the same for me like taking that breath, it's you know, another thing I've learned from all the amazing guests that I've had is the breathwork and just that mental talk and it really getting grounded being in the moment goes a long way. So much of our stress I find comes from not being in the moment. It's either thinking about things from the past or worrying about things in the future. But right in the second right now, what do I really have to be worried about really not that much. So yeah, it's a work in progress. It's never perfect but...

00:35:52 Chazmith: Yeah for sure it's for the rest of our lives. So you have been recovered for like a long time now, several years because you were fully by your standard recovered before you even started your YouTube channel. Have you in this three year span, because like you said you had to learn that you were sometimes getting revved up and then kind of frazzled at the end of the day. Have you had any "symptom flares" or any kind of symptoms or issues come up that have been like this reality check of oh nope I need to get realigned again or I need to make these shifts again? 

00:36:29 Raelan: It's a really tough one for me and I've heard other people say similar things that I've lost a bit of perspective of what a healthy person is supposed to look and feel like. I kind of expect myself to be a superwoman so if I feel bad ever, my husband and I will go out for a day of hiking or something and we'll come back and I'm like wow, I am beat. And I just, I'm like should I be this tired? And I look over at him and he's passed out on the couch. It's a normal thing to get tired and I do push myself really hard and I do work a lot of hours. So I guess the short answer is yes sometimes I do get things that remind me of CFS but I'm never really sure like is this just regular like a burnout symptom? Is this just a normal 45 year old body response to working this many hours and working out this much? 

00:37:16 Raelan: But what I do when it happens, and again, I have to thank all the amazing people that I've interviewed cuz they have given me the tools to carry myself through the rest of my life. Cuz you know, I've learned, like you've said, recovery doesn't stop really ever. Like it's a self-care journey that you have to keep doing the work to keep getting the healthy results. So a lot of the stuff that works for me in those moments is those brain training kind of things like just like okay you have a healthy body, you're fine, this is a normal response to pushing yourself too hard. When you take care of yourself and you get lots of rest, you feel fine. And I even kind of picture it like a pathway in my brain. And you know what makes me question it is because it feels sometimes very reminiscent of MECFS. But if I get some rest or a good night's sleep the next day I'm fine. Whereas before my symptoms weren't alleviated by rest. So it's kind of a neither here nor there answer but I guess my body still does give me messages whether we call it CFS or just how the body works, I don't know, but it's rare and minor and um they go away quickly.

00:38:20 Chazmith: Yeah, I love that you're bringing this up. It's so important cuz I think you're dead on like there's a lot of us who we do forget what's normal, you don't know what to compare it to. And I think there's the fear element because maybe there are some pathways that are still in the brain somewhere that connect to that me `CFS or whatever it is, fill in the blank for whatever that person's illness and symptoms are. And so I could see how easy it could be to get that fatigue after the hike and instantly go into fear or thinking it's gonna be another crash. Like you had so many times in your life, but to be able to stand in that true self and remind ourselves no, no I'm actually just tired because I actually just did a lot of work and this is normal and it's nice that you have proof and the fact that your husband's like sitting on the couch passed out, resting.

00:39:11 Chazmith: But I think it's really important for us to acknowledge that. And I know it's been a conversation I've heard so many times of not necessarily knowing what's normal and thinking we are supposed to maybe be somewhere up here but not. But we've, like you said, you're 45 now, so you can't really compare yourself today to like when you were 30 before you got sick because you're, you're not 30, you're 45 and you've never been 45 before and lived your life doing all the things you're doing today. But I know I am hard on myself too. I feel so connected to what you said. I'll do a ton of stuff or things will happen and then I'll be really exhausted and I have the fear come in for a minute and then like almost beat myself up. Like it's not good enough and I don't like to compare myself, but sometimes you have to look outward to bring yourself back into reality of what's normal and I'll see how, oh my gosh, there's people all around me who sometimes just wanna veg out and relax and like read a book or they might watch TV but I like reading books at night and like people unwind and all these things that I sometimes think is not normal, they're normal.

00:40:14 Raelan: You know. And I remember even in my twenties cuz I pushed myself really hard and sometimes I would just like I have days where it was so hard to get outta bed and I would be dragging all day. So sometimes for me now even it's more than just like, oh I'm tired after a hike. Like cuz I've pushed myself so hard that I'm like, I am like leveled right now. Which is I think where that scary feeling comes in. Like this is a little bit familiar but again is that a normal reaction to not taking care of yourself, not getting enough sleep, maybe too much stress and all of that. So yeah. 

00:40:42 Chazmith: Yeah. I love and you said get a night's rest, get a night's wrestling deal fine tomorrow.

00:40:48 Raelan: And trusting that. And I love that you're bringing this up and we're talking about it because I think sometimes we have this picture of fully recovered and everyone's like, yes, I just run marathons all the time now and climb mountains and life is perfect and doesn't go that way.

00:41:00 Chazmith: Yeah. You're like, no we're still humid. Like you did a really hard workout, you went on an all day hike. Yeah, it's okay. It's normal to be tired. Yeah, that's definitely a challenging one. I've experienced the fear I've experienced where I'm like I beat myself up or I think it's easy sometimes to go, oh my god, fear like what if this becomes this huge crash again? But like you, I've really now I'm having so much proof and evidence that oh I'm really exhausted tonight and I have that fear kind of kick in and then I'm like, I'm fine, I'm just gonna go lay down early tonight. I'm gonna read a book, I'm gonna sleep well and usually by the next day I'm fine. 

00:41:37 Raelan: Yeah. So it's a process learning to trust it 

00:41:40 Chazmith: Really. It is. It absolutely is. Okay. So let's see. You said you did courses for people with sleep if you're new to them. You said you do courses, is it related to healing and stuff? 

00:41:52 Raelan: Yeah, so yeah, so I mean I have two that are out right now. One's called Lifestyle Pacing Tools for Optimizing Your Energy and Achieving your Goals and it's on Skillshare. So if you're new to Skillshare you can actually do it for free. So it's called pacing and it... there are definitely things in there, strategies for pacing, but it's more about understanding how much energy you have, looking at where it's going and then figuring out how to divert it towards the things that are actually gonna help you get better. So it's about getting focus and learning habits and ways to shape your environment and daily tools to budget your energy in a way that is helping you get where you're trying to go.

00:42:25 Raelan: And then I have another one available as while it's on, it's called mastering meal planning cuz food so many people say is such a big stress for them. So it's ways to save time, save energy, save money with food, and just some hacks to help you simplify all of that in your life. 

00:42:41 Chazmith: That's awesome. What are your goals? Like what's next? Do you have any interest or goals to eventually offer one-on-one coaching or any kind of group programs or just not moving in that direction?

00:42:53 Raelan: It's a really good question. I mean right now I'm enjoying the YouTube channel so my focus is just trying to make that be as quality and provide the most value for people as possible. So I'm putting a lot of focus in that. I've recently started cuz I've been really focusing on interviews for a long time, which will continue to be a focus. But I've also started adding in an additional every week a video just of me doing a more deep dive in different topics. So that's one of the things I'm really excited about right now. I also really do love the online courses cuz I put them together just in short bite size, do it your own pace type videos and I like that it's there and people can do it whenever they want. And it's a more concise version of the hundreds of videos that are on my channel that can be a bit overwhelming  to put it mildly. So I do enjoy that aspect of it. So I'd say right now that is my focus, just getting that YouTube channel being really helpful for people and getting more courses out for people that will also help them. 

00:43:47 Chazmith: That's awesome. Well I wanna ask you one final question cuz we are on a timeframe here. I ask everybody the final question, which is just if you could only share one message for the rest of your life, what message would you wanna share with the world? 

00:44:01 Raelan: I love this question so much. This is such a good question. For me it would be you, whether it's your health, no matter what it is, some challenge in your life, your career, some goals that you have, it would just be to never give up, which is easier said than done I know. But it can be challenging when you're trying to get your health back, you're trying to get something off the ground, start a new career, get in shape, whatever it might be, it's gonna be a process of picking yourself back up over and over and over again. But just to find ways to keep that hope alive and keep that focus on why you're doing it. Cuz I think the biggest thing, the biggest driver that gets us towards anything is just not giving up. 

00:44:41 Chazmith: Yeah, I love that so much. And it's so true because how often we be like right there, right? Like even if we feel worse than we've ever felt, but we could still be right there and if we give up, we gave up just that one minute, one step too soon. 

00:44:56 Raelan: I used to, when I was sick and working on my recovery, I pictured myself going through a forest like I'm trying to get through this forest, this is my goal, which was kind of a form of brain training again, I didn't realize, but I pictured myself in this forest and I'd think, what if like just 10 trees away from the edge of it? And this is where I give up. Like what a shame would that be if I was so close? And this happens to so many people I interview, like they've just for decades been struggling and then just within a couple of months they pull it all together really quickly. So yeah. 

00:45:23 Chazmith: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I'm so grateful that we got to connect. I love getting to meet other people who are doing similar things in the community and it's just really fun to finally meet you and then also just get to share your message and introduce you to maybe somebody who's listening to you hasn't learned about your awesomeness yet. So thank you for being here with me. 

00:45:45 Raelan: Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for everything that you do. It's so incredible that there are so many of us doing this type of stuff right now, cuz there are millions of people out there who are struggling and I love how we're coming together and trying to work together to figure this all out. So yeah, thank you. 

00:45:57 Chazmith: Yeah, of course. 

00:46:00 Chazmith: Friends, that is a wrap. I do hope as always say you found value in today's episode. And if you have enjoyed listening to the various guests on this podcast, please consider leaving a five star review on Apple podcast or on my website www.ourpoweriswithin.com. And while you're on the website, leave me a fun little voice memo with a recent win. However big or small, I love hearing from you all. If you are someone who likes the video, make sure to subscribe to the newer YouTube channel that I have where I am posting more video content over the next several months. And stay on the lookout for this video that will drop soon. Until next time, make this week. Great.