Journey from Chronic Illness to Chronic Insipration

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TalkToMeGuy: Greetings everyone. This is the Sound Health radio show where we talk about the crossroads of the environment, our health and longevity, with Richard Talktomeguy and Sherry Edwards off working on the Sound Health portal. I would suggest going to the SoundHealthPortal.com, scrolling down just a bit and clicking on the Watch How button. You'll see a short video explaining how to record and submit your first recording. Then go back to SoundHealthPortal.com, scroll down to current active campaigns such as cellular inflammation, bio-diet, neuroplasticity, or memory.

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If you'd like to leave me a voice message with a question for a guest or a guest idea for a show, you can do that directly from the site and I will be notified. With that, today we're joined by someone whose story transforms our understanding of healing and resilience. Alayna Belquist is an environmental advocate and Lyme disease thriver who has turned her personal health crisis into a mission of hope for thousands in the chronic illness community. When Lyme disease struck, Alayna could have simply focused on treatment and recovery. Instead, she chose a different path, one that led her back to the very environment that once seemed like the source of her drama. Through connecting with nature, she discovered not just healing, but a profound transformation that she now describes as both empowering and life changing. What makes Alayna's advocacy particularly compelling is her deep understanding of complex multi-system chronic illnesses, from Lyme disease to mold illness and conditions like marcones that most people have never heard of. She's not just sharing hope, she's sharing hard-won knowledge about environmental and microbial factors that can make or break someone's healing journey. Today, she guides others through workshops and advocacy work, helping them reclaim not just their health, but their relationship with the natural world. Her message is both scientifically grounded and deeply personal, sometimes that what challenges us most can become our greatest catalyst for transformation. Welcome Alayna.

Alayna Bellquist: Well, that was so lovely. I just want to bottle that up. Thank you for that. That was incredible. Thank you. I'm like, she sounds pretty good.

TalkToMeGuy: She sounds cool. I want to talk with her. That's the idea. I want to talk with her. I want to read this because this is on your website. I'm a fact-driven nature-based scientist who guides people back to the natural world as a means to reclaim their innate health and to solve the environmental crisis. I just want to lay that down as sort of foundational.

There's that as a positive thing. And then the first thing I have to ask, because we were already talking backstage, of course, is how does this, we're backing into thriving. My question is, how does this affect or factor into the environmental crisis? What part of what you're talking about is about the environmental crisis, because I know your background is a microbiologist. Marine biology. Marine biologist. Yeah, fisheries. Fisheries. Okay. Yeah. But how does what you're teaching people affect or can affect what's going on with our environmental crisis?

Alayna Bellquist: I love that question. I have been so environmentally driven. I think I arrived on Earth that way. And then my family kind of really nurtured that in the way I was born on Vancouver Island. And that really became so much of my identity is loving animals, loving the planet, and then turning it into a career and focusing my education on it.

So when Lyme appeared in my life five years ago, it really opened my eyes to the way that I thought we needed to save the planet. And that what I was doing to help the environment, and I was doing it well from all different levels. I've done the nonprofit thing. I've, you know, quite literally like knocked on doors asking for money to help, you know, local ecosystems. And then I worked all the way up to DC and lobbied. So I've seen all levels of environmentalism. And then I think when I became so sick, I realized that while important, you know, we really do need all levels.

When a species might be going extinct, we really do need maybe some top down heavy handed interception. But I did realize in getting to know an entirely new community of breath workers and people like you and yoga teachers and naturopathic doctors, that they are quietly doing environmental work without really knowing it in many ways, because they are helping people heal. And I think our natural inclination and on our, and our nature that we use the word nature, our human nature is to be fully integrated in nature. And so these people, whether it's breathwork instructors or therapists are really guiding us back to our true nature. And when we integrate, reintegrate, re-nature, we protect what we love. You know, we've, it seems so basic, but we've seen it over and over again when people fall in love with an ecosystem or a species or whatever it is, they want to guard it, they want to protect it, they feel invested in it. And so I was starting to do, you know, therapy and all these things and saying, do you know you're an environmentalist just like me because you're helping people heal and healed people tend to demand less from the planet in terms of, you know, consumption and resources.

I think that I see people who are, you know, potentially looking for happiness outside themselves, whether or not that's like rampant shopping on Amazon or fast fashion or thinking they need the latest greatest whatever constant trying to fill some sort of hole with stuff. That's, that's a huge environmental impact that we all have. And so it was such a cool thing to say, oh my gosh, like there's environmentalism in the way that I knew it. But there's this new lens that I was looking at the world through and that's now what I want to do. I've left my career in fisheries.

I worked in fisheries for 15 or 20 years. And now I focus on trying to get people to full recovery with Lyme disease, guiding them, because full recovery is sometimes believed to be impossible with with chronic Lyme. And in doing that, like you so beautifully said with the introduction, can connecting people back to the thing they're most afraid of. And in doing that, making people feel connected to the planet. And want to protect it.

And so it's sort of a win-win all around. And for me, recovering fully from chronic Lyme disease was only possible because I leaned in even harder to nature into wild spaces. Even though my whole if you looked at my life on my resume, you'd be like, Oh, this girl is fully connected. I do it in a different way now. And I'm just really encouraging others to do the same for their own good and for the planet's, you know, survival at the end of the day.

TalkToMeGuy: Well, and that's my that was as I was reading and listening and studying for the show. That was one of the things that I realized that we had in common.

If we weren't on air, I'd use a bad word in a good way. I really, really blank about the planet. I really am not kidding.

Not caring for the planet. That that's what I've been talking about. Let's see, I've been doing this show for almost 13 years and I did four years at Tristro Radio. And then as we were talking backstage, I spent a lot of time in nature in the beauty of stunning raw organic nature. And so I really care about it. I'm much more comfortable in that realm that I am in doing even what I'm doing now, being in the technical world. But and that's most of what ultimately all the shows I do, whether I'm talking to a practitioner who's doing breath work or a practitioner who is an MD who got their ND and then discovered a different kind of practice or whatever. It's always about educating people to care about the planet. And my sort of bottom line is I don't care if we go extinct. Harsh.

Harsh, I admit. I'll say it with a cheery tone, but I don't care if we go extinct. If we if we continue to devolve the way we are, that could happen. And my thing is, okay, if that happens, the planet will be fine. She will be fine. She will recover, she'll rebuild something will crawl out of the ocean again.

And once again, the cycle will start. So I'm okay with that, which is not always a popular thing. The idea is going extinct. But I think I'm going to do it. I'm with you. I'm with you. Right.

Thank you. I think we have this alternative of what you are doing. And I see this more and more in the many years of doing shows with people that practitioners are such as yourself, really saying, let's be engaged with nature. Nature is.

I was going to save this for later, but I can't help it. Nature is always in a flow state. That's what so much of the breath work and so much of the meditation or transcendental blah, blah, blah, all those words, all those magic words about being quiet in nature. Is that nature is always in a natural flow state. It may not be pretty sometimes, but it's always in a flow. It's always in relationship to itself.

The fungus, the microxirom and the forest of the fungus is in communication with the tops of the trees. It may not look like it, but they are. Everybody's working together. It's teamwork for team environment. I'm sorry. I can't make that into a question.

Alayna Bellquist: Oh, no, it made me think of finding the mother tree. You've read Dr. Seaton. Yeah, that book is one of my favorite books of all time. So beautiful and in such an entertaining and beautiful way. You know, hammers home the point of the interconnectedness of everything and that's not we are not excluded from that. And so I'm constantly saying to people, you know, we are sicker than we've ever been physically, mentally, emotionally. The planet is in a very difficult position because of us. And I always think that what we're doing to the natural world is just being reflected back to us in our through and in our bodies and in our minds. And should we want to heal? It's it can't be separate from healing the planet as well. And what a beautiful opportunity. I mean, connecting with nature is easily my favorite thing to do in the world. I'm constantly asked because people know that I came from a really beautiful wild place Vancouver Island and now I live in Southern California. It's very different here.

But you still can connect. I, I spend a lot of intentional time with the crows in our neighborhood. And we have two beautiful sycamore trees in our front, our front boulevard. And it can be really, really meaningful even if you don't live in a place like Northern California or Vancouver Island. I can still find ways to connect really meaningfully here in the middle of quite literally tens of millions of people. So this isn't just something that's like exclusive if you live in like a really special place like Jackson or Carmel or something, you know what I mean? You can do this in LA too. And you're like only improve.

TalkToMeGuy: And you already said the magic word for me is crows. I'll make this very short. 12 years ago, I was hospitalized in a healthcare facility for a year at 30 hours of surgery. And as I was recovering, I would walk around, I would be on walking a lot. And I would walk outside in two hospital gowns so as not to frighten the neighbors.

I would walk around outside. And at some point the crows discovered me and I discovered the crows. And they would hop along the trees. I would walk around the building and then eventually I got to walking around the neighborhood. And they would see me coming and they'd know that I would have crackers left over from the trays of weird food that they would try to feed me. And I would come along and they'd go, oh, the guy's walking. Come on.

Speaker 3: And they'd talk to me. I'd talk to them. They'd come down and hop around and look at me like, dude, we don't know who you are or why you dress like that, but we like you. Wow.

TalkToMeGuy: That's pretty cool. So I'm huge. I'm huge on the team crow.

Alayna Bellquist: Oh, well, you've seen my website. They're dotted all over my website. I mean, they're actually Ravens. The intention was that they were Ravens. But I mean, I just think they're fascinating. And so do so many people because they really are. They're so intelligent. They're so social. They're so cheeky and quirky and loyal and just remarkable. They're remarkable. So I think we could learn a lot to know their local crows.

TalkToMeGuy: I think we could learn a lot from the crow community.

Alayna Bellquist: Oh, yeah. Or your cat or your dog or your horse or whatever it is.

TalkToMeGuy: Yeah, my favorite is go to the local dog park. There's a giant park near here where they do play soccer and that kind of thing, but they also have a dog run area. And sometimes I'll just sit there and watch the dogs and feed the crows crackers. I'm still doing, you know, I'm still doing.

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

TalkToMeGuy: Yeah. My two of my favorite things, dogs and crows together. That's like a win-win. Okay, I'll pull us back where we are. I have to ask, are ticks now an enemy for you?

Alayna Bellquist: No, not at all. Like not even at all. And I say, this is a person who spent a year in bed because you can't see me, but like air quotes because of a tick. Not at all.

Not even a little bit. I fully understand that people who are afraid of ticks and that's really, really common in the Lyme community. It's a very natural response to becoming sick at the hands of something.

I don't, I'm very much into like root cause. And to me, I was just asked last week, is Lyme disease a root cause of suffering and Lyme disease does, you know, lead to a lot of suffering and I experienced that firsthand for many years. But I don't think that I became so severely ill with Lyme disease because I was infected or bitten by Lyme infected tick. So no, I don't have, I don't, I'm not really afraid of ticks. I had one on me a couple of days ago in the yard. Not, it didn't bite me.

I'm not saying like go and be reckless and roll around and get bites. But after years and years of recovery, I now understand that the thing that actually makes me sick. It makes me more vulnerable to, to infection is what I'm more afraid of. And because Lyme is, is endemic to like most places on the planet, it can be exclusive of like the poles. And a lot of people are infected and have no signs of disease.

And that really interested me. My husband being one of them. He's a, he's a marine biologist and an avid hunter and he's been bitten by ticks many, many, many times and has no disease and has not one single symptom. And so I started to really look into that and that really empowered me to go, oh, okay, so I don't live in fear of ticks because I am not convinced.

And we know this that not everyone who is exposed to Borrelia, which is the, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, not everyone who is exposed to Borrelia gets sick and get, and has illness and has symptoms. And so I started to dig into that and in digging into that, I started to really empower myself. And the, the, the problem air quotes again was not outside of myself. It wasn't something I couldn't do about, you know, couldn't do anything about, I can't do anything about ticks. And we know that their populations are spreading and growing and that's all, you know, probably linked to climate and loss of predators and loss of habitat. And, you know, many reasons that's stuff that mostly is out of my control. And so I see the Lyme community really wanting to like spray areas with, I mean, not DDT, but we learned that lesson with DDT and you wanted to really control and control nature, which has never worked in our favor. And when I started digging and digging and digging, I realized that my root cause of suffering was actually within myself.

And so all of a sudden that like liberates you from fear of the ticks. Again, all of this being said, please don't go and be reckless, you know, this is kind of nuanced. This isn't black and white. But yeah, I don't avoid nature because of ticks. I don't avoid going off trail because of ticks.

I mean, I'm smart about it. I take precautions. And I also benefit hugely from going and spending time in, you know, coastal sage grub habitat here is pretty much loaded with ticks. And I'm not, you know, off trail, like rubbing up against all the bushes and, you know, you just, but I will go and lay on like there's lots of, you know, bedrock or whatever and I'll go lay out on them.

And, you know, I had a tick crawling on my arm a couple months ago and I was doing that and I just kind of dealt with it, you know, calmly. But no, not at all. I'm not, I really am not, which is just so crazy. If you read my story or you read my book, like, you'd be like, you would think it would be a natural response and I was afraid for a while. I used to, I mean, I've been a horseback rider since I was 10. And I did develop a fear of ticks when I moved to California because no one spoke about ticks or Lyme disease on Vancouver Island when I was there.

I moved to South California and it was a little bit more of a conversation, but not so much. And I started to develop a fear of it as the, if you do go online and you search Lyme disease or ticks, it is very fear inducing language and messaging. And I started to kind of be influenced by that.

And ironically getting Lyme disease made that go away, which is totally ironic, but it's also the way I chose to respond to it. So, you know, it's a, it's a no with an asterisk. No, but please be, you know, but don't be reckless. Don't be silly.

Don't be silly. Yeah. But like, it's like anything in life. Like if you, you could stay in and not take risks and be, you know, super safe or whatever, but that's not really the life I'm going to live.

TalkToMeGuy: Right. And what are the differences in environment? Well, Vancouver Island is an island, so that's probably keeping it isolated. But what are the, are there environmental differences between Southern California and Vancouver Island? I don't know.

Speaker 3: I mean, again, I'm a marine biologist, but totally different ecosystems like Vancouver Island is coastal dug for temperate rainforest. Down here it's Chaperal, coastal sage scrub dominant. So completely different, you know, flora fauna. So I know in Victoria, what's what I think has changed because when I was growing up in Victoria, nobody ever saw or talked about ticks. And the, it is an island. And the city can only be so big because you're on the southern tip of an island, but the city is rapidly growing out into the like communities outside of Victoria that used to be pretty rich forest.

And it breaks my heart to witness it. They're just kind of leveling these forests at a pretty unprecedented rate. And so I think there's a fit. I mean, there is a lot of habitat loss happening. For whatever reason, you're seeing now deer in Victoria, like you never used to see before. That was just not a thing. And so is that because like the mountain lions have been, you know, their populations are decreased?

I don't really know. Or they're being pushed out or the deer being forced into town or there's just so much beautiful opportunity if you're a deer to come in and cohabitate with people with all the beautiful like flowers that we plant. So there are so many more ticks in Victoria now.

People are getting them on their dogs. I just think it's really, I haven't heard like a crystal clear answer. I think we're still in kind of new days in terms of this communication. I know down here in Southern California. So like I said, my husband is a hunter and he's been very, he's such an outdoors man. And he's been out, you know, he spent his whole life outdoors, glassing on hilltops.

And there have always, he's always been bitten and, you know, attached to attached on Dubai ticks here. So no, I could, I should, I should look into that because they're definitely more popular. The population seems to be much, much greater here, much, much greater. I know in the winter, like the cold winter temperatures keep their populations at bay. Vancouver Island doesn't get that cold. I think it needs to be like quite significantly like a serious Canadian freeze, which Vancouver Island winters are absolutely warmer than they used to be. But I don't know if they ever were cold enough to keep them at bay. But I know that is part of their wider spreading is because the winters are just not like those deep freezes we used to get in many parts of the country just aren't happening as frequently and as for as long. So yeah, it's just a probably a more habitable place here. So they're just, you know, thriving.

Taking advantage. Yeah. And when we, you know, here, they, the ticks are just kind of the vector, right? The lime actually lives within the rodents, the rats, the squirrels, the birds, the, you know, whatever it is. And so the ticks just feed on them, and then feed on us and their vector for the illness. And so if we, you know, compromise the populations of the prey, the, you know, pred, like the hawks and eagles and mountain lions, rattlesnakes, whatever it is that keep those rodent populations in check, we're going to see potentially an increase in line. So rattlesnakes, they're amazing.

TalkToMeGuy: Yes, I've made friends with middle rattlesnakes. That was a learning in the forest.

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah, that's a learning curve. That's a learning curve when you move down here. That I've, I think I've seen about four of them now, like startling me on, you know, just maybe 10 days ago hiking. Yeah. And yeah, it's funny. I'm more afraid of a rattlesnake than I am a mountain lion or a bear. Much more afraid.

TalkToMeGuy: I have, we were talking backstage a bit and the audience knows that I grew up hiking in the Ventana wilderness. And there were, it only happened once where I woke up in the morning and there was a rattlesnake curled up on my mummy bag, my sleeping bag on my feet. And we both woke up and we both looked at each other like, Oh, this is not good. And he just, it just like, it didn't, I didn't, I wasn't aggressive. And eventually it just slithered off. Oh, you were a warm little. Yeah, of course. Warm, toasty, dry spot. Oh yeah, you're great.

The nature, wow, that is awesome. See it tonight. Yeah.

It was, it was fairly terrifying. Yeah, that is. I mean, admittedly, you know, they're beautiful animals when they're not in the strike pose.

Well, they're beautiful when they're in the strike pose too. But I mean, because it's just a warning, they're really just making you pay attention to like, it's like inflammation in the human system to me as a warning. It's the same thing with the Rattle on our rattlesnake. It just that it looks a lot more aggressive. Yeah.

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah, I love, you know, Dr. Gabor Maté. Yes. He spoke, we went to his, he spoke in San Diego a couple months ago and he said, he's talking about anger and how anger, you know, we've all repressed anger and anger is shameful and stuff down your anger. And how anger is natural in the animal kingdom and it's just a boundary enforcement back, you know, back up, stay away, you're in my space.

And he just, I loved how he broke it down so simply because I was like, oh yeah, like in the animal kingdom, like anger is expressed all the time, like back off, you know, leave me alone. But we're not allowed to do that.

TalkToMeGuy: No, we've all seen footage of you know, Jane Goodall and you know, approaching giant apes. Yeah. Where they do that lunge and beat their chest. They don't, they're just, they're just telling you. Yeah. Communicating. I can rip you in half if I need to. Yeah.

Alayna Bellquist: But I don't want to. She's such a hero of mine, just love her so much. Yeah.

TalkToMeGuy: She's an amazing, I met her at several environmental conferences. Oh, wow. And she's just, she's just very chimpanzee like that same kind of gaze, that casual gaze, slightly staring off, hands folded, just waiting quietly. You know, very like in her piece.

Yeah. Within her, with her inner peace and from my having spent so much time with animals, I think she's picked up on those traits from them. That same, she's always very much in a non-threatening, quiet, peaceful state.

Alayna Bellquist: Oh, that's so beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.

TalkToMeGuy: That's a whole story. But so, so it sounds like the Borrelia is the opportunity. And have we always had Borrelia?

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah. They, someone just told me that they found it in like the Iceman. Okay. Yeah. It's very old. It's been with us for a long, long, long time. This isn't new. I mean, some people love to get on the conspiracy train and say it was like government manufactured and released.

And I don't subscribe to that. But no, it's my writing instructor texted me a little while ago. Did you know they found Borrelia in the Iceman? And I was like, oh yeah, not surprised. Not surprised at all. It's not, you know, it's out there.

TalkToMeGuy: Because I was, I got my degree as a master herbalist in the 70s. I won't go further than that. I'll just say 70s. And had a retailer start a national manual for catalog. So I always think of things as some kind of illnesses. Let's pick on Candida. You know, it's opportunistic. But it's, but it only approaches somebody who's sort of in a leaning of, you know, there's a bunch of people. And I think that's the kind of psychodynamic that's involved in, I think, having Candida.

Alayna Bellquist: Oh, that's so interesting. And I think the same is with a lot of, I'm always looking for is the thing in nature created by something else stupid that we've done to nature. Probably.

TalkToMeGuy: And I feel the same way about people's states of health is, you know, if you eat a high carb diet, unrefined or refined, non really nutritive foods, you're going to get get somewhere. You're going to get where you're going. And so I consider those sort of opportunistic. And I know that's why I'm asking about the Borrelia.

But if it's been, it's just been around forever. I just don't remember. I as a kid, I don't remember they like, and they say hiking in forest and living along the chaperone of the big Circus line that I don't remember Borrelia. I don't remember Lyme's disease as it like, wow, as it is now. It's like Lyme's Lyme disease got like a PR campaign.

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah, there's an incredible documentary called the quiet epidemic. And it explains the politics, the science, the, the culture, the messaging. It does it. They researched exhaustively the story, the history of Lyme disease. Lyme disease wasn't even. Di, you know, documented diagnosed until I think the 70s out of Lyme, Connecticut, where all these children were exhibiting mysterious symptoms, flues throughout the summer that they wouldn't recover from. And it goes all the way back to that time in the 70s in Lyme, Connecticut, and sort of the mismanagement of the illness of the disease from all of these different perspectives and why we are where we are.

You know, failed vaccines and why it's been denied by the CDC up until relatively recently and why there is so much confusion. Is it autoimmune? Is it curable? Is it not curable? There's so much misinformation and confusion about it.

People are now starting to understand a little more clearly, but the treatment is not crystal clear. And what you were saying, I loved about Candida and kind of like traits that we see. I see the same traits over and over and over again in other people that have been infected or suffered from Lyme disease. I see a lot of myself mirrored in these people. A lot of very strong people pleasing tendencies and maybe higher, you know, more higher, like high strong type A kind of a frazzled, you know, jumpy nervous system, like tend to be a little bit like kind of overachieving that kind of stuff. And I think that's what I love about myself, like you see that consistently across people with Lyme disease, which is like really what I think was at the root of my becoming being so vulnerable to the Borellia.

But, and that's what I like love to dive in. That's what I was saying before. It's that well that's up to me to fix.

So then I can actually fix that and I can work on those things and make myself more resilient and more protected in the future. But there definitely is a wave happening of people communicating about this and trying to clear up a lot of the misinformation. I mean, when I was bitten, I didn't know if I didn't know if it was a pathogen and autoimmune. I knew I like knew nothing about Lyme disease when I got my blood test back and they said you have Lyme. I was like, you can get a blood test for Lyme.

I had no idea you could get a blood test for Lyme disease. So it's an interesting topic. It can be looked at through many, many different lenses. The way I speak about it, the way I look at Lyme and Lyme full recovery and regeneration and all that stuff is quite unique. And but it seems to be very helpful for people because ultimately I'm telling people that that full recovery is possible because I am a living breathing example of that, even when all of the literature and things online say that's not possible. Well, then I'm the case, the one case that has, but I've met other many other people who have also fully recovered. I don't test positive on any Lyme tests anymore. I don't have any symptoms. I feel better than I did before I was bitten.

And it's only brought in, it's only been a good thing for me. It's very, very, very excruciating. It was a very painful ride, very, very painful ride.

But I've come out better and stronger and more resilient. But yeah, like I think it is, there is something to the tick populations growing and expanding. And I do think now if you went to those places as you grew up hiking in, I think you would definitely see an increased number of ticks. Whether or not there, you know, not every tick carries Lyme too.

This is just to be crystal clear. Not every single tick carries Borrelia. Ticks, you know, harbor a lot of pathogens, a lot, I had co-infections. That's a whole other thing in the Lyme community. So you get Lyme disease and then your doctor says, oh, we need to test you for co-infections. I said, what's the heck's a co-infection?

So, well, they know they carry a lot. So I'm like, oh, great. So, you know, I had Babesia, tick-borne relapsing fever.

There's like Rocky Mountain fever. There's a lot that they cart around. They're effective vectors, that's for sure.

But I've, you know, I've treated all of them and I test negative on all of the Lyme tests and all of the co-infection tests now. Wow. Yeah. Possible. And I was very sick.

TalkToMeGuy: And so in a certain way, it seems like it is an opportunistic, potentially an opportunistic illness, meaning that if somebody, if you go into the forest and you're now doing, let's say, you're doing breath work and meditating and you're more at ease and you're less, your immune system is potentially less stressed out because you've learned technology or skills or work to help clear your mind and help your immune system be less like, all the time. And whereas somebody who is in that state of all the time, they go into the forest and maybe the, I'll say the tick, you know, senses that or senses some sort of, because as I say, nature really is opportunistic in a best of ways, but also it's, you know, who knows how it all works.

Alayna Bellquist: I just, I agree with everything you just said. I agree with everything you said, even though I can't always articulate it, and it certainly can't maybe be demonstrated scientifically. And that used to really bother me. I completely agree with what you just said. I know what you're trying to say. I know I struggle with expressing it too. And like my scientific training will kind of bash me over the head and say, what are you talking about? But I'm just, I'm totally in agreement with you.

TalkToMeGuy: And in your work, when you, okay, so you have somebody who contacts you and says, I have limes, I'm blanked, what do I do? Please help me. What's your process look like?

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah. So when I spent, you know, going on five years recovering exhaustively, you know, seeking out the best treatment and the best healers. And I have come to the conclusion that I am 100% not a medical doctor. So I'm not dishing out medical advice.

But what I am doing is can be a guide and can let my understanding of the natural world and my, my education and my career and my personality inform that. And that I have spent years now crawling out of the whole that was a very raging lime infection. And I have amassed just kind of this list, but not a literal list, but you know, these are the breathwork instructors, these, you know, the four pillars, I always say, people say, how do I get out of this? You know, Western medicine was very important for me. Alternative treatments, very important for me, mental and emotional work, and then nature. And so all of the treatments and the things that I suggest or recommend or share that worked for me fall under those four pillars. And then a deep, deep commitment to recovery, a deep commitment to all of those things to showing up every single day, regardless of the pain, regardless of the voices in your head, regardless, regardless, regardless of all these things, showing up and not and not showing it and not stopping. Commitment is probably the most important thing because lime recovery is extremely up and down. It is not a nice little return to health predictable, linear.

It is very up and down is very forwards and backwards and confusing. And so when people come to me and they're desperate, for one, I can relate. I understand that I understand I've been there. I've been too sick to shower. I've been too sick to do the dishes too sick to walk to the end of the driveway. I had to get my husband to drive me to my appointments too sick to go for car rides. So I can relate and I can understand it's terrifying.

It's physically and mentally beyond exhausting. And I think sometimes when someone just goes, I understand, like I really do, I get that. There's something just very calming about being seen. And then I say, also look at me, you look where I am now this is possible. I'm not unique.

I'm not special. I came in very depleted, very stressed, very overworked, very frazzled. And I was able to achieve a lot. And I saw the long way to go.

This is this isn't like one and done. There's a lot of work still to be done so that I am more resilient in the future. And so I just want to guide people and offer crystal clear what worked for me, what those, you know, and write down to what doctors were excellent, what breathwork instructors have been life changing, what coaches, you know, completely changed my perspective on life, what Instagram pages I follow. I'm such information. I devour information.

I'm pretty voracious with my seeking to understand. And that really worked well for me in my recovery. And so when you're really, really sick, sometimes that can be overwhelming. You're too sick to read, you're too sick to do anything. I'm too sick to watch TV a lot.

And like the energy required to watch TV was too much. And so if I can guide people, okay, you're if you're, you know, under the pillar of mental and emotional work, breathwork was life changing for me therapy, whatever it is. These are the breathwork practitioners that radically changed my entire life. And people, people respond really well, because it's very overwhelming. If you go online and you say, how do I cure Lyme disease? It might just tell you straight up, you're not going to cure this, you're going to manage symptoms. And you're going to aim for remission. And I just a different voice, I'm a different voice online for those people who I did not want to settle for a life managing symptoms. And I don't think that's how we're designed to live. And I use the natural world all the time is the greatest example of my healing. And the greatest example of coming back from utter devastation at the hands of humans. And that was really important for me, that came very naturally to me that I haven't seen other people do like anyone in this community. And that was just the privilege of having my education in my career. I was like, So I've seen species on the brink come back faster than we predicted when we did the right thing.

So that's going to work for me too. And I didn't really until I started talking to people about that, I didn't realize that that not everyone has a privilege of like, knowing that, you know, studying, you know, ecosystems and ecosystem recovery. So that's been really, really, really awesome. And I love talking to people about that stuff. And you're strong too, we're all strong, we all have resilience baked in, we

TalkToMeGuy: all nature is a phenomenal role model. It's the best to me. I've been back to hiking as a kid. I've been to places, well, more in Northern California now, I've been out in the forest where there have been forests. I'm part of California, I'm two miles from the coffee park fire, we're 1200 homes burned down in the big fire. And also that traveled from Napa across to the coast almost. I mean, that fire was massive.

Yeah. And so I've been in forested areas and hike through forested areas is where it's been burned to the ground. And yet, within a month or two, if you go back, there are going to be little sprouts of trees. Yeah, there are going to be weeds, there's going to be a little bit of nature, you can begin to hear the crows, the crows are like, where are the trees?

We can't get up the trees, what's going on? Yeah. So you can see, yes, it's a long haul, but it will come back, given the opportunity. That's why I don't know if I said this on air so far. I usually do, about I'm okay if we go extinct.

Yeah. The planet will come back. And that's true of fire and devastation. And I think that the same is true that lime has a potential of the same thing of like, it is horrific. And yet you can come back to the other side because look at Elena. Is this vital enough? Is this vital enough or what?

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah, like disturbance, fire is interesting. And it's cool because fire, you know, you move to Southern California and fire is the thing here. You have the Lago fire. And there's a greater understanding here that I've seen, which is really encouraging that fire is part of the ecosystem design. We do need fire.

It gets a little complicated when you're talking about like the magnitude and the like intensity of the fires that we're seeing, like burning the seed bed and burning Malibu stuff. But you know, fire is perfectly designed. Disturbance is part of the design. And so we aren't supposed to be free of disturbance. It's it's it strengthens ecosystems.

Fire strengthens the ecosystem. This disturbance lime, that Borrelia that I experienced, I experienced it very strongly because I was my, you know, my resilience, my immune system was jeopardized. But I did come back stronger. And that's just because I chose that's the way I made a very conscious choice about how I was going to respond. And we can do that.

We can all do that. And I think the messaging that we surround ourselves with is so important. You know, people are like, Oh, I just don't believe I can heal.

I'll make you need to immediately take inventory of what you're reading, what you're listening to, who you're hanging out with, are you on the lime forums, are you in the support groups that provide a lot of amazing stuff? And they also hand out a heavy serving of, you know, fear and worst case scenario and doom and gloom. I just refused to be a part of that. I was, I was too like, I'm not planting this stuff in my head.

So I was hyper vigilant about who and what I listened to and surrounded myself with that hitting immeasurable impact on my recovery. So listening to these kinds of conversations versus, you know, what's the next horrible symptom? And like, how might that get? What's the, you know, how might that show up for you?

Yeah. And yeah, these are all again, like I said, these are like nuanced topics, because, you know, you don't want to be like head in the clouds, you know, I, I needed to know I had babesia. And I needed to know that it was the reason I felt like I couldn't take a deep breath. I had severe air hunger. That was really great to go, Oh, that's the babesia. That's not, you know, that's not just like some weird thing.

TalkToMeGuy: I'm not just losing my mind. Totally.

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's a balance. But I see the people in the lime community tend to lean much more heavily on the, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Don't you dare get this? You don't want this. And I don't find that to be helpful for healing, like at all. It, those are my darkest times is when I was thinking that stuff.

TalkToMeGuy: Well, I think it's, it's, it's a tricky arena. I always, always refer to chronic fatigue people or can be the people who fall into that. I'll use this word and it's a really tricky word.

They become a victim of. Yes. And I think you need to turn that around. I think because, and I, I take this partially from, I've been interviewing Bruce Lipton since his first book. Yeah. And when I watched it, I once got to, I've seen him speak in person a couple of times back in the early days when he was talking about DNA RNA and how it,

Alayna Bellquist: I know I saw like 24 12 interviews with like listen to me. Yeah. I was like, wow, this is great.

TalkToMeGuy: And so he, he did a demo once where he would have PVC pipe. He'd be standing up there and he was kind of like, you know, the wacky professor. And he'd be showing how the DNA RNA transfers and everything. And then I started interviewing him then. And it was back even back then that we came up with the like, I came up with a phrase, our cells are listening.

Yes. And he said, that's, yes, that's so true. And this is after I listened to the long complex why I kind of break things down. I, I too am a research rat, speaking well of rats, that I finally figured out that that's really true that we underestimate what he says about how our cells communicate, you know, like our glandular system secretes something into the system and the cells have receptor sites. And if that gland, they're ductless, meaning that they don't go through the lymphatic system, they just sort of squirt it into the body. And the cells that have the antenna or the key to receive that will, they'll get that signal. And that he said, no, there, he said, our, we concurred on ourselves really are listening.

Yes. So I think when people get into a state of, oh, poor me, I'm sad, I'm broken, I'm, you know, and then they get into some sort of cascade about why they're bad or broken, they are bad, that they're not worthy, all that stuff that leads to what I consider to be a suppressed immune system. Because you're telling the body, I'm not healthy, I'm not good enough, I think I'm dying, the body is going to go, okay, we'll help you out with that. Because that's the message we're getting.

Alayna Bellquist: And so they had to repeat enough.

TalkToMeGuy: It has rinse and repeat, it's a bad cycle. So the, so the part, that part of your work that I read about on your site, and again, from listening and reading, that where you're helping people, uh, recontextualize that, I'll say it. So they take themselves out of that downward spiral of a suppressed immune system that's now more suppressed because you keep telling it, it's suppressed versus going like, no, I'm strong, I can do this again. Like the first time you got back on a horse was probably like an amazing moment for you.

Alayna Bellquist: And I, and I fully understand that because I was in this place too, where you are too sick to get out of bed. And so someone says to you, you have to believe you can heal.

And you're like, excuse you, I haven't been able to get up for three days. That's very hard to believe. And so I like to dig into that because I had to do that myself, because I found it, I know the word gaslighting gets overused. I don't even know if I'm using it correctly. But when I was told, you have to believe in your healing.

I was like, that is virtually impossible for me. It's, it's akin to saying to someone in a panic attack, you just have to stop worrying. Well, duh, like, of course I want to stop worrying. You know, of course I want to believe healing is an opportunity and I, and I'm capable. So I, what I did because I, so then I dug really deep into like the belief systems. And I talk about this all the time.

And I'm sure if people are listening, they're like, I'm here, she goes again. But like the belief systems that fuel those thoughts and those feelings and those actions. And where did those belief systems come from?

Probably, you know, when you were like four. And what, what is fueling that narrative in your head and getting, you know, if your end goal is healing, what are the blocks in the way? And the blocks for me anyways, were some of those belief systems like, well, of course, bad stuff happens to me.

Bad stuff, you know, I don't really deserve a lot of great stuff to happen to me. And like, those kind of belief systems, it's like getting to the deepest root of those takes a lot of time, takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of really like intentional work with, with people that are, you know, skilled in this. And that's where I feel like a guide, because I'm not a trauma informed coach. But I know a lot.

And I know some that train, like can transform your life. And here are their names. And this is why you should work with them.

And oh, here I have an interview with that person. Maybe you'll connect with them. Because changing those, those belief systems is really what started to move the ball for me.

And those belief systems are deeply ingrained into our brains. This isn't airy fairy. This is very real. There's many, many books on this, like Body Keeps the Score and those kind of books. And he Joe dispends a book why these things are ingrained into our, like you said, into ourselves, into our DNA, imprinted into us very, very strongly. But we have neuroplasticity and we can rewire new belief systems in just takes a lot of effort and a lot of showing up repeatedly.

And that's why I always say, you got to show up and you got to show up and you got to show up again. If you want to rewire rewrite, reform some new beliefs, this stuff is super hard. Like, it's possible and it takes a pretty intense commitment. I mean, I've grown a lot. And then like, I still subscribe to some beliefs about myself that in the front of my brain and consciously, I know are not true. But man, that deep part that subconscious that like inner child or whatever it is, still subscribes to some stuff that the adult me is like nonsense. This is not true.

But the person that little person inside is holding on for dear life. And like in the scheme of things, I'm still kind of new, right? Like I only started all this stuff like five years ago. Before that, I was a head down, you push through things, you just bulldoze through that was my I'm, I don't have time for therapy, I have time for feelings, I got to just, I got to head down and push. And then I got sick. And because like the, like it's, you know, the cheesy like listen to your body's whispers before they become screams, like my body was absolutely communicating to me leading up to this health crisis.

This was not at a left field. My body had been communicating to me. And I wasn't even listening. Now I really listen and I'm like, Oh man, she was like yelling at me. And I was just absolutely not no, no time because my time was dedicated towards achieving because I subscribed very strongly, like most people that my self worth was directly related to how much I achieved. And that is like so deeply embedded.

And that's really hard stuff to move. And like, I feel like so many, if not all of us kind of subscribe to that, you know, when you meet someone like what do you do? And you just like start listing off your job and your accomplishments instead of like, you know, what what animals do you like? Like, what's your favorite tree? Like basically that's now what I want to talk about. Yeah. Tell me about your childhood. So yeah, it's it's hard work, but it's worth it.

TalkToMeGuy: Well, I for me, it's always I've always found it to be a I call it the do be do be do. I've always had a difficult personally, I've always had a difficult time between the do and be.

Alayna Bellquist: Oh my gosh, that's so great.

TalkToMeGuy: I'm great at do. I'm great at do. I'm really good at do man. I was a working chef for 20 years. So I am a you know, head down in the kitchen sleep for three hours. Yeah, sleep for 10 minutes and come back and do another 20 hour shift. Yeah.

Yeah, that kind of thing. Sit down, sit down catering for 1000. And so I've done a lot of that do the you know, be the doing. Yeah, I'm really good at do boy, I'm good at do and does society love that?

Alayna Bellquist: Oh, yeah. I was a chef. Everybody was like, they never saw me because the only time when I wasn't in the kitchen, I was trying to sleep. For God's sakes, I need four hours a night.

Come on, people. It's brutally hard work. If you're really working in a kitchen, there were never any chopsticks or tweezers in my kitchens. These were working kitchens, not designer kitchens. And serving great food, but you know, it was still it was work. And I enjoyed the work, partially because well, that's a whole other show.

I enjoyed the work. But the being part was always difficult, even though I'd spent time around spiritual communities or meditating people or breath areas or you know, just every kind of because of for years, I traveled around and sold products at whole life expos kind of health affairs and events. So I've always been around people who did a lot of either meditating or breathing or some kind of spiritual practice or something that I can't say directly at poo pooed, but maybe I might have poo pooed.

Well, I think a real eye opener for me was, and it's still one of my favorite, it's not a practice, but it's a therapy. It's called EMDR. Yeah, it's great. Which I think is just brilliant. And I love it so much because it doesn't involve, I have some kind of weird skill in talking. I mean, I'm kind of good at it.

Yeah. And so in a therapeutic world, I'm good at talking with the therapist and they suddenly find themselves engaged in conversation with me. And it doesn't, I don't mean to, it just happens.

Alayna Bellquist: I can't help telling me about yourself. They're like, no, no, no, no.

TalkToMeGuy: No, don't ask me about my photography. No. So I just love the EMDR, the rapid eye movement technology, because it takes my talking brain out of it.

Alayna Bellquist: Oh, yes. I should do some more of that. I did. I'm like, you're kind of selling me on it. I'm like, I totally relate to what you just said. My husband's like, do you become friends with every doctor? I'm like, pretty much. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

TalkToMeGuy: All my doctors have always, you know, they always, at some point, we always end up talking about food. And at some point, it's like them asking me about places to go. Where should I eat? What's the great food? And then I'm talking about it because I know people with restaurants. And it's just, I'm, for somebody who's pretty reserved or kind of, you know, as a child, I might have been considered on the spectrum. Yeah. And I'm kind of shy in nature in person. Well, not really anymore. But sort of shy in nature, you know, but put a microphone in front of me and I am just chatty patty.

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah, it's incredible.

TalkToMeGuy: So I, that's why I love the EMDR or any kind of, you know, even the, doing the breath work, like with Ed Harold, does the breath work. And, and that makes me ask, are you a fan of nasal breathing?

Alayna Bellquist: For in terms of like doing a breath work practice?

TalkToMeGuy: Well, either doing it, but just in a general sense and, or supporting the immune system a little more, I think it's such a trend.

Alayna Bellquist: It's beneficial. Naisal reverse nasal breathing is not a trend. The understanding of the importance of the airway. And that is, it does really fascinate me. It's, it's, again, it's something that I almost thought was like too simple to be profound, but in all of my healing now, I'm like, Oh wait, maybe my relationship with that crow in my front yard is actually one of the most profound healing things I've done. And it's probably the most basic and I'm like, I think it's embarrassing or something. Same with the nasal breathing and the understanding of like the airway and the way we've modified airways through orthodontics and all of this stuff. It's, it's super interesting to me. Yeah, like the book, Breathe.

TalkToMeGuy: We've read. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like everyone's read that book and everyone's taping their mouth to sleep better at night and, and just turning their awareness to something that we do every day. We, you know, we never stop breathing until we pass.

And we just don't, we overlook it. And the power that has, I think if I had, if someone ever said to me, like, what is the most profound, like emotional healing you've done, it would be number one, like an intentional real connection to nature. But second would be breathwork and thinking about my breathing and not just in the practice, but also just like sitting and my shallow breathing right now is my mouth hanging open.

Alayna Bellquist: I don't, it's so crazy. It was never anything I gave a thought to, even though, you know, you're stressed, someone will say, take a, take a deep breath and like, you know, whatever. There's an incredible opportunity for healing in some, my first recommendation to people is read the book, Breathe.

And maybe even if you're not taking action on it, just the awareness of the fact that we all tend to breathe in a way that might kind of make us feel worse or more nervous or whatever it is. We're not learning this stuff like in school.

TalkToMeGuy: And no one would be amazing. I have to jump in there and say, wouldn't that be just again, insert your choice of bad words right here? Yeah. Amazing. If we taught children in school how to breathe,

Alayna Bellquist: how to breathe, how to sit in, you know, peace, how to get really dirty. I mean, I'm like constantly telling people, I'm like, go get really uncomfortable, get, go get filthy in nature. Go get freezing cold in that river, get uncomfortable, get really hot, get hungry, just be kind of more feral. It's like a lot of my advice to people in wild spaces, not like in the mall, but

TalkToMeGuy: how in the mall would be perfect? No, I'm a little feral in the mall. Yes, feral malls. I'll go to that mall.

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah, but yeah, so it's, it's, it's been, yes, I love the whole, I don't know a lot about it. I mean, I probably know more than your average person because I do tend to like read about the stuff and find it interesting. You know, I bought the mouth tape, I think about it at night. I'm like, wait, if I wake up and my mouth is open, I'm like, what of it?

No, no. I think about like, you know, I was like one of those kids in the 90s, like we all were, I had a bunch of my molars taken out and they now understand the impact of that. And that was, no one was being, you know, malicious about that. That was just what they did at the time. And now they don't do that anymore. Like no kids are getting their rolls ripped out.

TalkToMeGuy: They're getting their power extended. I still remember, I still, that was my first drug experience was being gassed to have them yank out 04. Yeah. No, we'll just do all four while you're here. Wack, whack, whack. And I'm like, this is, there was nothing wrong with them. No, no. It'd be like cutting off a finger just because they thought it was a good idea. Why did, why, what? I never understood that.

Alayna Bellquist: Yeah, we all had crowded mouths, but now it's like, and that was, I think that all went back to like one man, one dentist who kind of came up with that whole method. And it's so cool because here we are 20, 30 years later. And my friend's a dentist and I was like, do you pull kids molars out? And he was like, maybe one a year, maybe like, no, we don't do that anymore. And I was like, Oh, that's so cool.

Like that's a pretty big change in a pretty short amount of time. And so yeah, I read about the stuff. I think about the stuff.

Not too much because it can be like as an adult when you think about the like airway stuff. A lot of that is kind of, you can do like the therapy, like the myofascial work. And there are a lot of amazing people online I've learned from. And there's just a ton of information because it also be a little bit of a rabbit hole because I'm like, okay, so like, I'm, you know, I'm not about to like expand my palette at 42.

And that's a whole multi year thing. I don't have any, I just don't want to go down that path. So it can be a little like, when I read about it, but I am really interested in it. And I'm super hopeful for like the young kids today who are getting like orthodontics with this new understanding. I think it's really, really, really awesome.

And it has the potential to change a lot of lives. Not to be like dread filled about like what happened. I got beautiful teeth. I've got a great smile. Like it's good.

TalkToMeGuy: Yeah, yeah, it's good. I'll come back. I mean, as we're moving, I'm still defined we're moving toward the exit that back to the nasal breathing for a moment. That one of the things I was actually doing a session with Ed Harold, I interviewed him a bunch of times. And I was having some stress issues. And he taught me this thing with nasal breathing, where you inhale, you cover your right nostril, you inhale through the left nostril, and then you exhale through the right nostril slowly. And you do that repeatedly for a few minutes. And then what you'll find is that actually creates a calming sensation by affecting the vagal nerve. So it actually calms the entire system down. And you come out of that like you've been doing a deep meditation for a long time.

And it's quite handy. I was having some kind of health based panic issues. And when I was working with him, he said, Oh, let's do this. And like two minutes later, I was completely at ease. And so then later on, I was talking to my hippie doctor, actually a medical doctor, but I call him a hippie doctor because she also works with herbs, which I love. And we were talking about she said, Oh, you mean praniomic breathing? And I'm like, of course, you would have some swanky name for it.

Alayna Bellquist: It's like 3000 year old practice.

TalkToMeGuy: Exactly. It's like 3000 years old. Yeah, why? What do you know about that? Suddenly? Yeah. Yeah.

Alayna Bellquist: Well, there's nothing like trying to think your way out of anxiety just works so well.

TalkToMeGuy: That's so, so very effective under a stress situation. Yeah, he used to go on the walk in when I was chefing, I would go on the walk in and just like shriek for a few minutes.

Because you couldn't hear people couldn't hear you. So you could like release your anxiety and then go back out and finish off the next 150 meals. Yes.

It's a lifestyle. Okay, where will this going to be a show number two? Where would you like people to find out about your work and contact you to do work with you?

Alayna Bellquist: I love when people reach out to me. I have met some people that are just incredibly important to me because they were on podcasts and they said reach out. So I start by saying reach out, I mean it. My name is AlaynaBelquist. So online, you can find me ElenaBelquist.com. I'm pretty active on social media.

So on Instagram at AlaynaBelquist. I'm currently planning an online forum for called the LimeRx forum, which will be held in July. And I have a number of internationally recognized medical doctors and healers and biologists and we're all going to just talk about Lyme through a new lens.

So anyone who's suffering from Lyme disease or any chronic, you know, infection that's been labeled or any condition that's been labeled chronic would love to have you there. That information, just, you know, if you sign it for my emails, I send, I don't send a ton of emails, but I do send that kind of information there. If you want to register for the forum, that would be there.

It's all free. So yeah, I'm active online. I love to connect with people, whether it's about nature or fisheries or tuna or Lyme or anything like that. Please, please reach out and I'm easy to get a hold of.

So that's where you can find me. And I have a book coming out. It's called Healing by Nature. It's my entire recovery story and the implications for, you know, environmentalism and the lessons I've learned about environmentalism through chronic illness. And that does not have a release date yet, but I am working, I have an agent and we're trying to find a home for my book right now. So please reach out.

TalkToMeGuy: That was fun. That was more fun than I thought it was going to be.

Alayna Bellquist: Yay, chronic illness. No, exactly. Go keep chronic illness. Yay. Oh, boy. Yeah, I'm come back anytime. This has been super enjoyable. Anytime you want to keep the conversation going, I'd love to come back.

TalkToMeGuy: Excellent. Thank you so much. And everybody have a great rest of the weekend and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.