Burnout Recovery: Why Rest Isn't Working — Lyme, Mold & Nervous System Healing w/ Ryan Syverson

Burnout recovery doesn't work when your nervous system doesn't feel safe — and no amount of sleep, vacation, or supplements will override that. Ryan Syverson spent seven years fighting Lyme disease and mold illness after burning out completely, and what finally moved the needle wasn't another protocol. It was doing less.

Ryan went from competitive athlete to Marine to network specialist, building a personal training business and a real estate portfolio on the side. At 35 it took him 45 minutes to get out of bed. Doctors told him his labs were fine. He lost his home to mold, filed bankruptcy, lost his identity as an athlete — and only years later recognized the collapse as the reset he'd been ignoring warnings about.

Now a Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner and founder of Sublyme Life Coaching, Ryan works with high achievers on chronic fatigue, nervous system dysregulation, and burnout symptoms that bloodwork won't explain. In this conversation he and Renae get into why hustle culture's "sleep when you're dead" mindset produces the exact crash it's trying to outrun.

What we cover:

— The "check engine light" your body runs for years before the crash
— Why chronic fight-or-flight shuts off your prefrontal cortex — and your focus, sleep, and digestion with it
— Why nervous system regulation requires cellular energy (and why forcing yourself to relax backfires)
— Mold illness and Lyme disease recovery when every doctor says your labs look normal
— Grieving the identity that burned out instead of trying to revive it
— The physical, emotional, and spiritual trifecta behind real healing
— What Cellular Design Restoration is and what happens in 120 days

This one's for the overachievers, entrepreneurs, first responders, and high performers who know how to work hard and are starting to add up what it's costing.

CONNECT WITH RYAN

Ryan's Instagram: @Ryan__Syverson

Website: https://go.yoursublymelife.com/audit
Use code REBELS for a Cellular Safety Audit consultation (normally $97).

⚡Follow Hustle Rebels wherever you listen, and send this to someone who's still grinding through the warning signs.

⚡ Subscribe to the Weekly Recharge Newsletter: https://wayward-wellness-coaching.kit.com

#BurnoutRecovery #NervousSystemRegulation #ChronicFatigue #MoldIllness #LymeDisease #HustleCulture #FunctionalMedicine #HighAchievers #ChronicIllness #NervousSystemHealing #EntrepreneurBurnout #HustleRebels #BurnoutSymptoms #HealingJourney #FightOrFlight

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

But we have check engine lights going off in our body all the time. We maybe we'll take some aspirin to alleviate pain. And it may be that that pain is not that bad. But next thing you know, we're moving from one cup of coffee to two, and then from two to three, and then we're constantly trying to put band-aids on these signals coming from our body. Cause as a hustle culture in this society, we wear a badge of honor, like, hey, I don't need sleep. I can do all this. When you're younger, you might get by with it for a while, but you're gonna pay for it later down the road. And your body is gonna be sending constant warnings and signals. The more we ignore, the crash is gonna be that much bigger. And that's what it was for me. It sounds like it was for you as well.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

This is Hustle Rebels, the podcast for people who still want to win, but are starting to question the cost. I'm Rene, your host and burnout recovery expert. I help overachievers get out from under the grind culture, stop sacrificing themselves to a system that literally never gives back, and actually live a life that they worked so hard for like they deserve. Before retirement takes their decrepit body. Welcome back to Hustle Rebels, the show for people who know how to work hard but are starting to question the cost. Today's episode is part of the Toolbox, our sponsored series where we sit down with people who are doing the real work in the space and dig into a specific tool that you can actually use. My guest today knows burnout from the inside, not just from a textbook, but from his own life. He was a network specialist building a personal training business and a real estate portfolio on the side, grinding on every front until he burned himself all the way down to the ground. What followed was seven years of fighting Lyme disease and mold illness and a slow, very different kind of recovery. One that didn't look like any type of hustle that got him sick in the first place. So today he's a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner and founder of Sublime Life Coaching, a certified personal trainer, and a nervous system and mindset coach who helps high achievers get their energy back without making healing a full-time job, which is very difficult. So please welcome Ryan Sieverson.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Thanks for having me. I appreciate you having me, Renee. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

So, Ryan, I'm really excited to start off with your story because you were a competitive athlete, then a Marine, then building a business and a real estate portfolio on the side. And then, like I said, you had just burned yourself straight to the ground. But what does that actually look like from the inside before you knew what was happening?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah. So I grew up in athlete my whole life playing hockey and football, baseball. And after high school, I ended up joining the Marine Corps and just kind of like wanted to push myself. I was kind of a little bit lost. But going through all that and then getting out, I worked for AT ⁇ T as a network specialist. And you know, I was probably, let's see, when it this all hit me, I was 35. I was still playing competitive ice hockey, going to the gym like five, six days a week. Had my investment portfolios that were all going under during the housing crisis, lots of stress. I actually was engaged at that time and we broke off my engagements. And it was like just this perfect storm of everything going around. My whole life, I would just avoid dealing with my emotions and all that stuff by hitting the gym and being active and abusing drugs and alcohol and just pushing myself constantly until one day when I woke up when I was 35, I think started to kind of fall apart. My health was screaming at me, but I just kept pushing through. And then that one day it was like shortly after I turned 35, where it was like I woke up and it was like a like my worst nightmare. It ended up taking I was in so much pain that it took me like 45 minutes to get out of bed and put my clothes on. I was late to work and I couldn't figure out what was going on. All my joints ached, my muscles were aching. And then from that point on, like I wasn't sleeping. I was probably getting like three, four hours of sleep a night if I was lucky. Went to see all these different doctors and like, oh, you're too stressed, you know, your labs look good, you're the perfect bill of health. And like everybody said I was fine, went to different specialists, other than like a positive ANA marker, which is an autoimmune marker. Everything was good. And so then they, after like a year of that, I started

Mold Lyme Turning Point

SPEAKER_01 4:25

to notice that there was like a musty smell in my home. And I'm like, huh. And so I started researching mold and came across the work of Dr. Richie Shoemaker, and everything that he was describing was me to a T. I had already been to functional medicine practitioners and integrative practitioners, and they had slapped the label of fibromyalgia on me. And that was like when I was, I'm done with the system, like they're not even gonna bother to try to look into it. And I had brought like markers for them to look into, and yeah, I was barely scraping by. Was functional enough to go to work, but I just didn't have a life. I stayed home all the time. I couldn't play hockey anymore, which was really devastating. I couldn't go to the gym anymore, so I completely lost my identity as this athlete and like social person and all this. And that was exactly what I needed at the time because it was like my body screaming at me, it told me to slow down. I eventually discovered that I did have mold in my home. I got crazy to the point where I was sniffing outlets and I was telling my mom, like, can you smell the mold behind the wall? And they're like, She's like, Ryan, you are crazy. Like, I think you need to go seek help. And sure enough, there was mold, and my whole home was like flooded in mold. So I remediated, spent like $20,000 in my savings to come to find out that the unit below mine was full of mold as well. And the remediators are like, Hey, we can finish, but within a month, you're gonna have mold right back in your place unless that unit is taken care of and it was foreclosed. They didn't have anybody live in there. And so I just like, you know what? I'm walking away. I ended up walking away from my home, let it go into foreclosure, and that was like the beginning of it all. And it was like the wiping out of a slate. I ended up having to even file bankruptcy for that with all my investment properties and everything, but it was a clean slate. As soon as I moved out, I started feeling better for a while, and then another wave of things started coming, and I had to go and find out. And that's when I eventually discovered I had Lyme disease. And so I spent the next five and a half years from there because I was like a year and a half into my whole thing. Um, and I had left the Western Medical Model, went into functional medicine, started getting integrated medicine, then doing all the alternative practices. And through the whole process, I approached healing in the first probably five years. The way I approach everything else was just to grind and to push harder. And as like to paraphrase Einstein, like you can't fix the problem from the same mindset that created it. And when I, you know, trying to perfect the protocols and all the different things, doing all the testing, like I it got me to a certain point that you know, I was definitely better, but I was still struggling. And uh a couple of things happened that really kind of shaped and shifted things for me. First was I started dating a girl and things are going great. And then after about a month and a half, like I thought we were like, you know, this is amazing. And then you could feel the like the distance she was pulling away. So I called her and she was brave enough. And to this day, I thank her because she's like, Ryan, I think you're super awesome. I enjoy spending time with you, but you just talk about and focus on your illness just too much, and I can't be with somebody like that. And that was like a major like gut punch. I was like, oh man, but it was exactly what I needed because I didn't realize how much I was focusing on my illness, and so I shifted and stopped focusing so much on it. And then was also a time in my living room reading a book on Lyme disease, and I was too fatigued to go to the park and I was kind of feeling down and opened up a chapter and was talking about trauma and emotions and how this is like a big sticking point for a lot of people with chronic illness. And I was like, oh my God. Like, I early on, like five years prior, I was doing these meditations and I had like things from my past that came up when I didn't know what it meant, and I didn't want to think about it, and it all came flooding through in that moment. I'm like, oh man, there's way more deeper here, and it's not about the physical aspect. And so I stopped doing all the detoxes and the protocols, and I just started living my life, working on my emotions, getting into personal development, and I stopped healing and just started living and just having fun and seeing myself. And within literally within like six months, I went from like 70% to like 85 to like 90%. And like that was like the final straw that I needed to get into. And that really opened the door for me to understand healing, not from a physical perspective, but from a emotional, energetic, and spiritual perspective as well. And so it wasn't about doing more, it was about doing less and just living in alignment with what you really want.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Wow, you hit so many topics. We gotta feel like we gotta like peel all this back like an onion. But the first two that really have popped out is the fact that we often feel like when you hit rock bottom and your body is screaming at you, you think that it is rock bottom and that that that's a bad thing. Like you talk about it's interesting how you talk about the fact that you went into foreclosure and bankruptcy in like a positive light, right? Because you said that it was a blank slate. Many times people would probably fall into like that pit of despair when in reality that was like your launching pad. And then going back into an identity shift, it's almost like you had to grieve a loss of identity for people that are listening and they're seeing like, wow, your life kind of spiraled from an outside perspective, kind of spiraled out of control. What would you say to someone like that that probably feels like their body is screaming at them, their identity is spiraling out of control from your perspective in that moment? How would you describe to them, like, wow, maybe this is something that's more of a launching pad for you,

Acceptance Surrender Shift

SPEAKER_00 10:17

too?

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah, I mean, I do want to clarify that was a very rock bottom moment. And I had, I felt like despair and like my life was over. I mean, even the coming to make the decision to file bankruptcy was very difficult because I just didn't want the stigma and like everybody's like, dude, like we see that this is all investment properties. It's not like you're just racking up credit card debt or anything like that. But I didn't want to do it. But once I finally made the decision to do it, it was like this huge weight lifted off of me. And so, like, I was just determined to get better. I didn't care about my credit report at that time. I was like such in despair in that moment. But it took me a couple of years later to really realize, like, wow, this was what I needed because it forced me to slow down. And I remember when I first got into meditation, was like, okay, maybe this can help me. Because if it is stress, meditation can help. And all my life I've surrounded myself with people. If I wasn't with people, I had music or movies going on, or I was high, or I was drunk, or whatever, like I just couldn't be with my own thoughts. And that was a big realization. Like, holy cow, like, I can be with myself and not, I'm not gonna implode my my mind and my racing thoughts and all that thing that I thought was gonna kill me because I just didn't want to sit with it. It was uncomfortable, but that was a big thing for me. And I think if we can slow down enough and it's easy for me to say this now than it is to be in the moment, but if we can start to realize that life is working for us versus against us, and that's something that other people helped me realize that too. Somewhere right around year five, I was having a conversation with a friend and I was like, you know what? As awful as this is, this has kind of been a gift for me because it forced me. I'm a completely different person than I was then, and I needed that old identity to die. It got me to a certain space, and I have a huge tattoo on my side that is like a snake. I'm deathly afraid of snakes. So it's like facing my fears, but a snake is gonna shed its skin and it's renewed. And I kind of think about that like us, we're not dying, we're constantly moving towards something. And the way we look at it is the lens that we look at it is gonna be how we see it. So if we see it as the worst action or thing that could ever happen to us, and we fall into victim mode, which I did and I still do, I just see it for all the negatives. But I'm like, oh, what can I take out of this? The first thing I took is like, I changed my diet. What I thought was healthy was not healthy for me. And now I'm eating these foods that are healthy for me. I seem positive shift. I'm not abusing drugs and alcohol anymore. This is an amazing thing. I'm meeting new people from a different kind of community that's more supportive for me, not pulling me back into my old identity. And it's so I think it's for somebody, if you're in that particular state where you feel like it's rock bottom, I think a big two words that really come out right now is like acceptance and surrender. It's like accept what is and just know that this too shall pass. Because if you don't accept it, you're constantly fighting it. And when you're resisting something, it's persisting. And so if you can just let go and be like, okay, this is what it is, and acceptance doesn't mean you're and doesn't mean you're giving up. It's just it means you're loosening control of the reins. And when you loosen control and start to trust things shift because that's giving your nervous system and your cells a signal of safety that they need. Because if you're bracing and resisting, your body, your cells, your nervous system is bracing as well. And you can't heal from that place. So as hard as it is, it's just to slow down, let go, accept, and surrender and just know that things will get better.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

I can resonate on so many levels and everything that you were saying. I feel like it was like a mirror of the past few years of my life, too, thinking that what I had experienced was also kind of a rock bottom and having that identity of what I thought was eating healthy and working out the correct way, and having the identity of the firefighter and you know, being that strong person. And now all of a sudden I ate these keto noodles that I thought were healthy, but was everything was processed, you know, and then caused all of this array of surgeries to happen. Now all of a sudden my body is shutting down, everything is failing, I've lost my career. It just feels like everything has been ripped out from underneath you. But then looking hindsight, I had set the intention that something needed to change because I knew internally that I was burning out and that I did need something to change because I couldn't sustain the pace that I was going at. So it took my body to kind of shut down in order for me to listen. Because if I hadn't if that hadn't happened, I would still be that miserable, emotional, dark despair type of person, you know, reliant on alcohol, reliant on withdrawing, just in a deep, dark emotional despair, overworking myself. So it's interesting how it just all works to how life really does work for your good.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

It really does. And yeah, like you were saying too, with the body screaming like that. It's like the analogy a lot of my mentors, or sometimes I'll use with my clients, is that you know, when your check engine light goes off on your car, you're like, whoa, I need to get this into the shop because if I don't fix it now, it could get really bad. But we have check engine lights going off in our body all the time. And we maybe will take some aspirin to alleviate pain. And it may be that that pain is not that bad. But next thing you know, we're having from moving from one cup of coffee to two, and then from two to three, and then we're constantly trying to put band-aids on these signals coming from our body. Cause as a hustle culture in this society, like grinding, it's a lot of people we wear a badge of honor, like, hey, I don't need sleep, I can do all this. And when you're younger, you might get by with it for a while, but you're gonna pay for it later down the road, and your body is gonna be sending constant warnings and signals, and the more we ignore the crash is gonna be that much bigger. And that's what it was for me. It sounds

Hustle Culture Breakdown

SPEAKER_01 16:39

like it was for you as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Yeah, and I can totally understand that badge of honor. I mean, our chief would emulate that, saying, You can sleep when you're dead, you know, we work our 24, 36, 48 hour shifts. And when my back started hurting before these surgeries that I'd had unrelated to that, I started having hip pain. And I thought it was from deadlifting because I was really into resistance training and I was just pushing myself to continue deadlifting. So I thought it was just hip pain. And again, I thought I was working out properly, but I wasn't doing functional movements. So as I continued to add weight improperly, I didn't recognize the symptoms. I just kept taking morniproxin, mornoproxin, mornoproxin till one day my leg completely went numb and like dead. We were onto normal routine chimney fire, and I'm carrying up like a chainsaw. I had my breathing pack on my hips. So I'm just carrying everything up. Got a chainsaw, I got another tool in my other hand, and I got my breathing pack on my hips, and I'm walking up the ladder, and all of a sudden my left leg went dead, and it was like severe pain. And I'm like, oh wow, this isn't good, and this is not a hip issue. Like, this is my back, and I think I'm fucked. Like, because I kept ignoring all the issues. And then my next thought was I'm the only woman on my fire department. I cannot say anything about this. And I have to pretend, and I was driving the ladder that day, and that's the only thing that got me through the rest of my shift was like, thank God I'm not scheduled on the ambulance or the engine, because at least I can get through just driving the ladder, because I can just be like, Yeah, I'm just gonna move the ladder, you know, and just kind of skirt skirt and not actually have to do super manual stuff. I was like, all right, don't cry, take a bunch of Neproxen, don't give yourself an ulcer. But it was like that badge of honor and priding myself on outworking and just pushing myself. And even then, I was like, all right, just get through the day, grab an MRI. It can't be too bad, right? It's all right. But what do you think is so broken about that mindset that we have as like this hustle culture?

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Oh man, it's very pervasive

Why Hustle Mindset Breaks Us

SPEAKER_01 18:55

in society. There's nothing against working hard. I think we do have to work hard, but we can work smarter now and being in alignment. But with the hustle culture stuff, and like you said, you can sleep when you're dead. That's things that I used to hear too in the Marine Corps. And there's certain times where we need to push through and disregard what's happening in the body in the moment. So when it comes to that mindset about the badge of honor and pushing through things, I really do think it's doing us a disservice. In some aspects, we need to do it, like in a wartime situation. If you're in a battle, you need to push through the discomfort and recoup when you get back. For you, like climbing the ladder in the middle of the fire and having that. I mean, I can only imagine how scary that must have been for you in that moment. Pushing through and getting through that is needed. But in a hustle culture type society where we're seeing influencers that I'll sleep when I'm dead, I'm gonna continue to push through. And we always are comparing ourselves to others. That was like a big thing for me. Like they're way ahead of where I am right now, and they started later than me. What's wrong with me? And so in my mind, I'm like, I just need to push harder, I need to work longer hours, I'm gonna stay up later, and you know, because a lot of people say I'm when it comes down to it, nobody can say they outworking it because I work the hardest. I do agree that we need to work hard, but not when it sacrifices our body and our mind. The thing is, in order for us to create something that if you're an entrepreneur and you're creating a service that's helping somebody, the only way you can have impact on impact those people is if you're coming in from an alignment and you're working from your place of presence. Because when you're driving and you're forcing, you're gonna create something for so long, but then it's gonna start to become inauthentic, you're gonna burn out, and then all of a sudden your impact is gonna go because you're not able to keep up with it. And so you're gonna fizzle out and die off, and there's no longevity in that. So if you want longevity, you just need to, I shouldn't say just need to, but it's just becoming aware of the fact that pushing harder is not the answer. It's you know, being in alignment, and a lot of times if we're pushing through something that's not like that we just hate, like for instance, a job we hate, pushing through that's more feedback to us as well. Like as a network specialist for me with ATT, I hated my job, and I eventually was able to leave it. But yeah, pushing harder is not definitely not always the answer. And I like it makes me think of there's a guy that I played hockey with in in high school, and he was the hardest worker and he would push hard all the time. He was trying so hard that he could never be in an instinctual flow, and there's always coming back to that resistance thought. It's like somebody playing the piano. If you're thinking and trying really hard to play the piano, your fingers aren't going to move. You can't feel the rhythm and be in that moment. And so you're not going to produce a great result. But if you let go of all that and you're just working and you're in a calm state, you

Nervous System Energy

SPEAKER_01 21:51

can create something beautiful and you're not forcing yourself. And so that's kind of what I would have to say about that.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Yeah, absolutely. Non resistance. It's definitely, you know, it's kind of like the story that I was mentioning to you earlier today about being the cat on the balcony in paradise, just eating your tuna and reminding yourself that everything just works out. But you also talk about the survival brain versus a calmer, higher state where real ideas and clarity can come from. And it just brings in that aspect of the nervous system. So for someone who has never really thought about their nervous system as a performance issue, how would you break that down for them?

SPEAKER_01 22:30

So we have our nervous system coming into the autonomic nervous system parts of your brain, your amygdala, your hippocampus. When you're in this chronic state of fight or flight, you can't access the prefrontal cortex, the higher brain. It can be in this inverse seesaw relationship. So when you're calm and focused, novelty can really bring out that prefrontal cortex. That's when we're in our higher brain, we're in joy, we're in flow, we can create different things, but we're in this constricted, more fight or flight mode. We go into our mammalian brain and we just don't have access to that. And actually, like research looking at nervous system stuff, like when let's say you're in an argument with your partner and you're yelling at each other and you're both amplified. When you say, Are you even listening to me? They can't really hear you because like your auditory things change in what you can hear because your body is set to like just recognize threat. And so it can sound like Charlie Brown's teacher. Want wah, wah. And so when you're not present and you're in that state of like hustle and grinding, and you're constantly in a nervous system dysregulation, your focus is gonna be off. It'll start impacting your sleep from a physiological perspective. You're not gonna digest food well, you're gonna struggle detoxing. And so your body is just set for survival, and that can become ingrained in the learned behavior. And so we want you to teach and bring safety back into the system. And once you can start to be in a more regulated state and bring your prefrontal cortex on, like you start thinking and focusing better, you're gonna be more productive at work, you're gonna wake up feeling more refreshed. Cause when your nervous system's fried, you could sleep for eight hours and wake up and still feel like you didn't sleep at all. So everything just kind of goes out the door because your body, your nervous system, and even if we go down to like a cellular level, because our mitochondria, which are these power plants of your cell, which do more than just generate energy, they act like little alarm sensors in your body and they're picking up for sense cues of like danger. And that could be your thoughts, your emotions, whatever like lighting environments you're in, if you're dealing with toxins or whatever that may be. And so that is working with your nervous system. And something that I think a lot of us don't think about is that we talk about we wanting to calm down and regulate our nervous system. And so people are trying to force that. And two things about that, we can't force safety from the brain. We can't just talk ourselves into feeling safe. Our body needs to feel it, the nervous system needs to sense it. And in order for us to regulate the nervous system, we also need energy, and energy is coming from the cell. And so, if you're struggling to make energy at a cellular level, you're gonna struggle to regulate your nervous system. I know a lot of clients and people I work with will be, well, I'm doing all the nervous system regulation tools, and they may work for a little bit, but you can't stay regulated because you don't have the energy for your nervous system to be regulated. And then that's just impacting from like a you know an uh overachiever's perspective. You're not gonna be able to create and do the things that you want, and you're gonna have a hard time in relationships just because you just don't have the physiological capacity to make energy and to regulate. And so it's all an interconnected thing, and it's not just, hey, we need to fix your cells and and fix your body and it's gonna be great, or hey, we just need to work on your nervous system. It's all of the above, and yeah, that's it's really big when it comes to all that and feeling safe in your body.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Yeah, it's really that, it's the full trifecta, which is what you work through, right? Because it's the identity shifting too. And I talk with the people that I work with that sometimes the version of you that burnt out isn't necessarily supposed to be revived, right? Because there's a reason why it got burnt out. And it's there's a lot of different reasons why there's an identity underneath all of that that's causing our drive to be that type of individual that's hustling so hard. But you talk about that trifecta, the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. So these actually just connect in your work and why someone just can't work in that physical aspect and that peace alone. And then you also say something that I resonate with where how it takes energy to calm down. So for someone that's just running on empty and telling them, like, oh, you just need to force yourself to relax, that's just often the wrong move. So, how would you explain to someone that this trifecta is what you really need to be working on? And it's not just about forcing yourself to relax or take a vacation or enjoy your weekends.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Yeah. So trifecta, physical body, emotional body, and the spiritual body. And so most of us are working on the physical body. I did it for five plus years in my recovery. Sometimes I get stuck in stuck going back to that mindset still. But if you think of it, it's only a third of what is bringing whole health to the system. And like I mentioned in my story, I avoided the emotional component for so long. And so I started to, and once I realized that, that was a big key that unlocked. But then it was also having a spiritual connection, and that's like what personal development started to open me up to, and like the thought of surrender and feeling safe. Like I think about at the time they call it a holy instance from like a course of miracles, where, and this kind of like shapes how I lived the first part of my life, and what contributed to me getting sick is like I felt alone all the time. Like when I was in rooms with friends, even when I was with my significant other, sometimes at that point, I would feel alone. And it was because I was totally disconnected from my creator, and again, that could be whatever it is for somebody, something greater than me. And in this process of me going through all these different things, I finally had a holy instance where I felt the presence of God or Jesus for me. It only lasted like a maybe two seconds, three seconds. I remember breaking down crying in front of my wife, and I'm like, oh, I finally don't feel alone. There's something here supporting me. And true surrender is relinquishing control, realizing that life or the universe or God or whatever is there supporting you in this process. And they talk about vitalism when you get into biology and how medicine and like Newtonian, how we think about duality and medicine, we're always thinking it's biological, but life force is coming from something outside of us. Like we get this, and if we're not tapped into it and opening ourselves up to it again, whatever that is for you, you're missing out on a huge opportunity. And the way I see things is that the body is the last thing to break down. First, it's breaking our connection to the spiritual aspect of having some sort of connection to something greater than us. We're all connected, we're all one, and then there's one thing that's you know, whatever creator that is for you. And then that'll start to we'll start to have emotional stuff, and that can be handed down from generation to generation within families, things that happen to us when we're little and the stories and the beliefs we make about ourselves. Now we're breaking down things even more. And then from a cellular perspective or like a quantum biology perspective, our cells are always listening. We're looking to be in coherence. And when there's lack of coherence, information doesn't travel, cells don't speak to each other correctly. And all of a sudden, now it could be the cells in your liver. They're not speaking, communicating, and working in unison. And now they're reducing energy production, and then all of a sudden you're not detoxing well enough. And then that's gonna trickle into toxins building up in your system. And so we can't just look at it from a physical aspect. We can take bitter herbs and do all these different things to support liver function and bioflow. But if we still are in like this fight or flight response, that's gonna block it and we don't have this connection to this vital force. And so I think we need to look at all three aspects in a whole health container because without that, you're

Cellular Design Restoration

SPEAKER_01 30:28

missing just a huge piece. And for us to feel whole, we need to feel like as a part of a whole and we need to feel comfortable in ourselves, and that's beginning to love ourselves as well.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

I feel like that's a great segue to talk about how you help individuals, especially the listeners right now. So I would love for you to take this time to tell us about cellular design restoration. So, what is it in your own words, what's actually happening in somebody's body and specifically during those 120 days?

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Yeah, so cellular design restoration was it's so I I follow what's called the cell danger response. This is work from Dr. Robert Nabio in San Diego. He discovered that our mitochondria, like I mentioned earlier, like these sensors that they create energy that provides life for us as well, based on from quantum perspectives and nutrients and air and oxygen. So cellular design restoration is like bringing us back to our cells' original design. Your body already knows how to heal, you know, all the answers, you have everything, and it's really just about remembering who you are. And you're this great, most amazing like creation there is. Like the human body is so fascinating. And so it's not about gathering more information and knowledge, like it's there if we open up to it. So it's when people come to me, they've seen 15 different doctors are doing a lot of the physical stuff right. So it's like, okay, but they've turned healing into their full-time job. They may be working, they may not be working. And so now they have two full-time jobs that they're working about healing and they can't get anywhere. So it's like, let's pull things back and look at things from a different perspective. And I have like the cell danger response, I have like 12 points that contribute to stress on a cellular and nervous system perspective. And so we're like, let's look at through an assessment through labs. I use blood work and heritage immunal analysis and genetics to look at all the different aspects of what are the things that are sending danger signals to your cells that are downregulating energy. And what are you doing currently that we could shift things? So it's not about adding more, it's about removing what's in the way, focusing on maybe two or three of the spokes that are probably driving that danger signal the most, and then helping you live more in alignment with nature. Light is a big thing, it's something that I'm really big on. Is like seeing sun, like sun, everything on this planet is without the sun is gone. And we need that too. I mean, the the food you eat is just trapped energy from the sun and it's fueling us, and we need it. Our skin is like a big, why can't I think of the name right now? Solar panels. Thank you. Yes, your skin is like like this huge solar organ or solar power plant that's pulling in electrons and information from the sun, and then blue light is is dehydrating and it makes our brain think that it's noon 24-7. So that messes up with communication, the symphony of hormones. So living in alignment with light light is really big. So we help them go back to like the basics, and then in that process, we're helping them restore cellular energy. And we mentioned earlier that everything requires energy to change, your mindset to change, your nervous system to change requires energy. So we start there in helping you get signals to create energy, and then we start to look at, you know, what are some of the core beliefs that you have? Where are these things, you know, that maybe contributed to your illness to begin with or your burnout to begin with? And we start to look at those and start to look at them from a different lens and create safety, safety in the body that could be removing your 25 supplements and putting them down to five and just waking with the sun, blocking blue light and your eating light, we're just giving signals of safety. And then from there, once you start to feel safe in your system, your body is going to start to work better. Clients, a lot of times, will tell me, Wow, I feel totally different. And we don't add supplements, we don't do anything because they feel safe. And when they feel safe, your nervous system starts to shift, your cells will start to produce more energy. So those 120 days is just really taking people, looking at what those major stressors are for them, starting to reduce them, helping them feel safe in their body, and then just moving them through the process and helping them. The basis behind that too is the remember method, is another method of mine. And it's helping them remember who they are. And when they do that, they can realize that all the answers are there within them and the body knows how to heal. We just need to get out of the way.

SPEAKER_00 34:56

I love that perspective shift because I feel like a lot of the times we have been so ingrained to not be in tune with our bodies and to just trust the doctor, trust Western medicine, take this pill. Even in the, you know, the functional medicine world, take all these supplements, you know. It's like we go from one to the other, and now you're all of a sudden, like you said, on 25 supplements and you're like, I don't even know what any of these do. And half the time you can get it from the food that you're eating if you're eating the right foods or just going outside in daylight, you know. I love the perspective shifts that you have in teaching people that your body has all the answers, you have the ability to heal. You just have to find the right markers to do so. So it's like giving the power back to the individual.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

And that's like, I think the autonomy of realizing because a lot of people think that okay, especially like when it comes to autoimmune, like I have Hashimoto's or I have rheumatory arthritis, there's nothing I can do. It's my genetics. Genetics are just potential, they only make up about 15% of like what happens. What really matters is like your lifestyle, your mindset, working through all these different things. And when you realize that you have the power to make these changes and you have this health autonomy, that's when really big things change too, because you are the creator of your own life. Whether we or not we want to agree with that or not, we can continue to create things that are making us feel terrible and like in this specific situation. But realizing that we have 100% responsibility of all the good things and the bad things in our lives gives you the power back and you can start to make changes. And that was a huge realization for me early on in my, I'd say probably around year two or three in my illness, was like, wow, I have the power to change and I don't have to put it out to somebody else to fix me. And a lot of people will come to you like, You need to heal me. I'm like, I can't heal you. You're the only one that can heal yourself. I can guide you and shine the light on specific aspects that can help you. But when it all is said and done, it's really coming back to you and you taking your power back. I'm not the one that's in doing that. You're the one that's doing that.

SPEAKER_00 37:07

Yeah. If someone is listening and they're deep in the hustle culture and they have a deep sense of skepticism, especially deep sense of skepticism of like solutions or this type of healing, how would you describe what you do and how you help them?

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Yeah, so skepticism is very I can totally understand it because I was very skeptical as well. Not everybody has all the answers. I'm not saying I have all the answers. And one thing I will say too is that your belief in something is huge. And I remember hearing this on a podcast one day about if you can believe in something strong enough, it can work. And there is the power of the placebo or the noacebo. That's one thing, but there are three things that people don't really understand, like from a skeptical standpoint. And we've talked about one of them is that energy, you need energy to calm down, you need energy to make shifts in your body, your emotional wellness, your mindset change, and all that. Your superpower, which a lot of us which would be the overachiever type A, is a superpower. It's come from something from our upbringing or something that happened to us because as humans, we want to feel loved and accepted, and we need to feel safe. And some of us are using these things as a superpower, and they are superpowers, but then that can also be Achilles' heel. So, like your belief that I'm not good enough or I need to constantly keep pushing is keeping you in that place. Shifting that can be a big thing and slowing down to get more, which we've talked about as well. So, like skeptical in something, if somebody tells you, you know, they have the perfect cure, you just have to take one supplement or do this, and that's going to be the that's definitely skeptical. I think use your intuition to lean into what like you're meeting somebody and you're going to work with them. What is your intuitive reaction to them? And what's your intuitive response to them? And does it feel good to you? If somebody's trying to force things, so I have a lot of clients that come to me or their people are giving them these very heavy protocol-driven things that are forcing them, they're very aggressive and it makes them feel worse. And so it's always about meeting somebody where they're at and listening to you because nobody knows you better than you do. And so if somebody's like, no, no, it's not this, it's you got to do this. There's nobody knows your body better than you do, and understanding that. So it's meeting the person where they're at, again, helping them feel safe. And really, safety is the key. And so if you feel comfortable and safe with somebody, and then you have the belief and just trusting the process, things will work out. It's not about pushing harder. If somebody's telling you you just need to keep pushing harder, give pause and start to wonder like, okay, is this me trying to cram a square peg in a round hole because it's not going to work? So just come back and settle back a little bit and allow things to take place and trust the process.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Yeah, I feel like that's a great way of trying to gain the trust of a skeptic. I'm also a skeptic. If you were to tell me five years ago this would be the stuff that I would be interested in or even believe in the type of healing, I probably would laugh at you. But here we are now.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Yeah, absolutely. It's so interesting. One other thing, too, I would say is that it helps. And this is something that I've gotten from clients of mine that it helps if we always want to work with somebody too, that's been in your shoes, because then they can understand. Not all practitioners have that. If somebody's working with Lyme, they never had Lyme, they can't walk a mile on your shoes. And it doesn't mean that they're not going to be able to help you. But I do think if somebody can understand your position and where you're at, and they were at where you are at, and that they're where you want to be now. Like that is somebody proving to you that the process does work. Again, it's not always the same path for everybody, but having proof and concept that goes a long way as well.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Yeah, absolutely. It gains that trust for sure.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Well, I feel like I just have one more question left for you, although I feel like we could talk about this forever. If there was one thing that you could leave the listeners with that that you would want them to hear, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 41:12

Wherever you're at right now, again, we mentioned this earlier that this too shall pass. So this is feeling like a like the bottomed out time for you. That is actually like the greatest time for change and transformation. It's not the great, you know, we all like the accolades and things and successes that are doing good, but it's not, that's not where we're learning. We're learning from when we hit rock bottom. And one of my mentors always said the the further down in the rock bottom you go, the higher there is for you to climb out and and respond to that. So for every up, there's a down. If you're feeling like you're burnt out and there's no way you can get out of this, take pause and realize that this is only temporary. You have the autonomy to make change, and this is a calling for you to shift into a new identity and transform and grow into a greater version of yourself. And it's not going to happen overnight. And at the end of it, when you do bounce back to that way up, you're going to look back and you'd be like, wow, this is one of the greatest moments of my life. And I think about Dr. Gabor Mate, I went through some of his trainings and some of the things he said that in his research of people that have recovered and have had these massive trans, what be it spiritual, mental, emotional, however it was, all of those people have hit a very rock bottom spot. And it was that rock bottom spot that helped them shift and change their trajectory to become this vibrant, new, greater version of themselves. And a lot of us are grieving the old identity. I definitely was. I was like, oh, I can't be this, that dude anymore. But that dude anymore was he served his purpose. He got me to that point. And now the person that you're becoming is going to be way better and it's going to, you're going to love yourself much more from there. So that would be my parting note for you that this is only temporary and it can get better from here.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

I love the perspective shifts that you have and also giving the authority and power back to the individuals that you work with, too. But Ryan, this has been such a great conversation. It's been rich in so many different ways. So thank you for being honest about all of it and your life and everything that you do to help individuals. So before we go, I would love for you to tell everyone that's listening where can people find you and what does it look like to actually work with you?

SPEAKER_01 43:26

I'm most active on Instagram as Ryan double underscore severson. So that's R-Y-A-N double underscore S-Y-V-E-R-S-O-N. And then for all your listeners here, Renee, I have provided a special coupon code for you guys to do a cellular safety audit with me. So this would be a consultation, and you would fill out an intake assessment that helps me tabulate and help you understand which of those 12 spokes in this the CDR or the cellular safety system audit would likely need the most attention for you. So you can get clarity around which areas you need to work on to move the needle the most because they're going to pull those stressors off of your cells and your nervous system, which is going to allow energy and for things to start to shift. So yeah, just use Rebels is the coupon code for there. And then if you wanted to work for me, we could definitely have a conversation there and discuss if that's something that feels like it resonates and is a good fit for you. There's also, if you find me on Instagram, there's a link there, you can book a call. But the best way to do it would be through the Rebels coupon code. And then that allows us that's a 60-minute call. So we can go deep into what's happening for you. These are likely the areas that you need to focus on. And then at that point, you can determine if that's something you feel like you can handle yourself or if you want to discuss what it might look like to work together, we can do that as well.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Awesome. That's such a great thing. So that link and the code, they're both going to be in the show notes for the cellular safety audit. So definitely use that code Rebels. Don't worry about writing it down in case you're driving, because everything's going to be down there for you guys to check it out. So, Ryan, thank you again for sharing so much of your own story with us today. And then for everyone that is listening, if this episode hits something for you, do me a favor, follow Hustle Rebels wherever you're listening, and share this one with someone who needs to hear it because it's the best way to help people find their way out of the hustle and grind. So we will see you guys next time.