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In this episode, we discuss:

You’ll hear me chat with Kayla Saint-Onge. She is a Bioenergetic (BIE) Practitioner who works with clients on a variety of stressor related symptoms such as digestive issues, hormone imbalances, food and environmental sensitivities, and fatigue.

• How Kayla ended up in the hospital for one month
• Why we’re both traumatized by ENSURE (lol)
• What the heck IS bioenergetics? + what a session looks like
• How to re-balance your body to eliminate food sensitivities
• Dance parties on Instagram
• Having fun WITHOUT alcohol
• Releasing control of your healing path

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Episode Transcript:

Kayla: That kind of reconnected me to my spiritual side and I immediately started meditating when I was in the hospital. Every single day, I did music meditation where I listened to songs that really got me up and at ’em and I talked to God. I talked to my higher power. I brought on my angels and I did so much mindful healing when I was in the hospital and I felt like this was my calling. I knew at that moment that I had gotten sick for a reason. A, because I think the things in my life had added up to that disease, but it came crashing down for a reason because I was meant to do something more with my life and give back to others.
Sarah: Welcome to the Healing Uncensored podcast. My name is Sarah Small. I’m a health and mind-set coach for women with autoimmune disease just like you. I absolutely love helping you tap into yourself healing power, uncover the energetic side of healing and release limiting beliefs around your body and your life. Think of this podcast is everything you wouldn’t hear at your doctor’s office. It’s a place for empowered souls to move beyond food and heal themselves on a soul level. I hope you enjoy today’s episode. Now let’s begin.
Hello everyone. Today you are going to hear me chat with the beautiful Kayla Saint-Onge. She is a bioenergetic practitioner and is extremely passionate about helping people discover the root cause of their symptoms so that they can achieve balance and start feeling like their best self. Kayla and I both happen to be bioenergetic practitioners, but we practice different modalities so I was super excited to hear her explain what type of bioenergetics that she practices and really see what a session with her would look like. Full disclosure as well -Kayla and I kept chatting for another two and a half hours after this episode because we had so much in common, and I think you’re really going to learn a lot from her today and now we’re determined to meet in person because of social media. How cool is it that social media can really bring us together in this authentic, beautiful, genuine way. So I know that you are going to want to take notes and that you are going to love this episode today with Kayla. So let’s dive in and get this healing party started. Hi Kayla, welcome to the show.
Kayla: Hey Sarah, thanks much for having me.
Sarah: So glad to have you and talk about bioenergetics as well as listening to your gut, all about how healing is not linear today and just see where this conversation goes. But I wanted to start by asking you a little bit about you, how you became interested in bioenergetics and what your own health journey has looked like.

How Kayla ended up in the hospital for one month

Kayla: Awesome. Thanks Sarah. I guess just before we get started, I’m going to just read a quick disclaimer about BIE. So bioenergetics (or BIE) practitioners are not medical doctors and do not use medical diagnostic or treatment procedures. The services performed by BIE practitioners are at all times restricted to consultation on the subject of nutritional matters and homeostatic imbalances, and does not involve diagnosing, hearing, prognosticating or treating, which will constitute the practice of medicine in this country in which a medical license is required. All suggestions if any regarding herbs or nutritional matters are based on historical and traditional views.
Sarah: That’s our required disclaimer, everyone.
Kayla: So you can guys can just jump ahead of that one. So a bit about myself and BIE. I was actually diagnosed with an autoimmune disease – ulcerative colitis – back in 2011 when I was 24 years old and it was a pretty bad situation. It came on pretty aggressively and I landed myself in the hospital for one good month, and during that time I kind of learned pretty quickly how diet played a role in the body and started to adopt a really good way of clean eating while in the hospital actually, and then followed a pretty strict diet for two years. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It’s called the SCD or the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.
Sarah: Wait. Can we back up one second? How did you manage to eat that way in the hospital?
Kayla: So my aunt was a nurse and she had somebody in her hospital one city over tell her about this book. And so right away I was like, mom, dad, go get me this book. Of course you’re in the hospital, you don’t have much to do with your time. So I started diving in and reading all about the research and how the body is impacted by these poly-chain disaccharides and how the body should have monosaccharides, single cell molecules that help the body to digest carbs better, and how this impacts people with Crohn’s or colitis or celiac or any kind of auto immunes really. There has even been like an autism connection as well. So while in the hospital, my first meal they gave me was raw celery, raw tomatoes and some rolled up turkey lunch meat, and this was after I was on a three day liquid diet.
Sarah: Wow.
Kayla: I mean I’m not a nutritionist or anything, but this doesn’t seem like food I should be eating as my first meal. So basically after that, my mom started to take the book and make recipes from almond flour. We just started to make things from home and started bringing them into the hospital. This definitely raised flags because the registered dietitian didn’t like this. I wasn’t drinking my Ensure®. I had lost 20 pounds. Her goal was to get me back with my weight on. She wanted me eating butter; every meal I had butter.
Sarah: Butter?

Why we’re both traumatized by ENSURE (lol)

Kayla: Butter! She’s like, well you have to make sure you’re getting fat in you. I had jello. I was being given Ensure®.
Sarah: Talking about Ensure – so I had my jaw wired shut for two months when I was 16 years old cause I had jaw surgery. Same thing. They were like just drink Ensure®, and I was grossly skinny, like almost under a hundred pounds.
Kayla: Same.
Sarah: It was horrible, and I was drinking cappuccinos for calories, but the Ensure was what they told me to drink and it was …oh my God, never, ever again. I don’t know if you have trauma from that, but I’m like, never again.
Kayla: No. And when I hear parents or people that are like, yeah, well she’s not eating now or he’s not eating now so they’re on Ensure, I’m just like, have you read the ingredients? The first ingredient is sugar.
Sarah: Yeah. It’s crazy, right? And people like doctors, dietitians are recommending something like that.

Kayla: Yeah, it’s nutty. So then basically when I was in the hospital, I had this sheet that had like a sticker for every single intolerance. So I started telling them that I had allergies. So what are your allergies? I’m like, I’m allergic to dairy. I’m allergic to gluten. I’m allergic to sugar, I’m allergic… I just started giving out all these allergies that they would be legitimately bringing me food that I could eat. So eventually over time, because I was there for a month, I ended up being fed things like squash, steamed green beans, plain chicken breasts, plain tuna, plain salmon, and that was kind of my diet in rotation and I kind of stuck with that the entire time that I was there. So then I got out of the hospital, I was on a drug called Remicade at the time and quality of life is not great. I was told to accept that this was my new normal, that I would experience flares from time to time, which I did. I was on prednisone. If I experienced a flare from now on and I just was like, this can’t be it. I was on this SCD diet for two years and I followed this thing religiously to the T. I never cheated once and I just wasn’t getting drastically better the way that I was supposed to be, and the way that I had read online all these people were getting better.
So finally I had a colleague telling me that she had a daughter who has severe lactose intolerance. If she touches it, she’ll break out into hives. And I was like, Oh man, I have a severe anaphylactic allergy to shellfish. I understand this. And she goes, yeah, but now she eats ice cream and now she eats pizza, and I’m like, what? How is this possible? She goes, yeah, she sees this lady, she works with your energy. She balances you out and then you’re good again. And I was like, okay, I got to see this. This sounds a little bit voodoo, but I’m in.
So I went in for my first appointment. She started to muscle test me on all these different food items and I was intolerant to literally everything. Even the good foods I was eating like almond flour, like honey, like chicken, like salmon, like the squash, like the green beans, like all these foods that were really good for me. My body was muscle testing weak to, and so after seeing her, I cut out every single food that came up as a weak intolerance for me, and because there were so many foods, we only worked with certain foods as she balanced me out for them. So I was only okay to eat at that time, I think chicken, there are a few veggies at the time and I literally ate that in rotation for two weeks, and every two weeks I kept seeing her and she would balance me out for more foods and I would reintroduce them back into my diet, and slowly I regained a plethora of foods again that I no longer was intolerant to. And my health started getting better drastically, like right away. I have not been on prednisone since I started doing BIE. I have not had to use that medication again and so it’s totally changed my life around.
And so as soon as I started working with her, I was like, I need to do this myself. Other people need to learn about BIE. I want to help other people. And so as a prerequisite to being a BIE practitioner, I had to be a nutritionist or you have to be a massage therapist or an MD or some kind of designation like that, a chiropractor. So I said, you know what, I’m really into nutrition. That’s going to be my route. So I enrolled and started doing nutrition school and then eventually got my BIE designation last year.
Sarah: That’s awesome. Congratulations.
Kayla: Thank you.
Sarah: What were you doing before all of this? I guess you were only 24 years old when you ended up in the hospital. Maybe you hadn’t figured it out yet, but was this a big career change for you because of what you experienced?
Kayla: Definitely. So I went to school for HR, got my degree in that, and so I was working towards a role in HR and I’m still doing that right now. So I’m kind of transitioning or trying to transition into growing my practice right now, but as soon as I had this experience, everything shifted. Before, my goal was to be VP of HR. I wanted to work my way up the corporate ladder. I wanted to grind it out, put in the hours, get all of my designations and just go at it, and that was my dream job. Literally that’s all I could see myself doing. And then after this experience, everything changed. Everything shifted and I felt this greater calling to help others. And it was interesting because when I was in the hospital, I actually never had a moment where I broke down and was just like, why? Why did this happen to me? I’m 24 years old. I lead a healthy lifestyle-ish. I binge drink now and again. Who didn’t at that age? But why is this happening to me? And I never felt that way. That book, – John of God – someone gave it to me when I was in the hospital, and that kind of reconnected me to my spiritual side, and I immediately started meditating when I was in the hospital. Every single day I did music meditation where I listened to songs that really got me up and at ’em, and I talked to God. I talked to my higher power. I brought on my angels and I did so much mindful healing when I was in the hospital, and I felt like this was my calling. I knew at that moment that I had gotten sick for a reason – a, because I think the things in my life had added up to that disease, but it came crashing down for a reason because I was meant to do something more with my life and give back to others.
Sarah: That’s so beautiful, and I think that’s really inspiring for other people to hear too, to see that there are, sometimes this deeper message or calling or soul’s purpose that is under this layer or label of chronic illness, or the ulcerative colitis or whatever your diagnosis is, and that you can really create something so beautiful out of it. So that’s my similar experience where I went through all of these stumbling blocks and challenges, that then brought me to autoimmune tribe. So I think our listeners probably are going to be really interested in what bioenergetics really is. You talked a little bit about what these sessions were like when you first experienced it. If someone came to you and me, I’m your patient and I came to you, I was like, Hey girl, I need to sort my stuff out. What would we do? What would a session look like?

What the heck IS bioenergetics? + what a session looks like

Kayla: Okay, perfect. So basically I first try to explain to my clients what BIE is all about at the onset of a session, so they kind of have an understanding of how things work. So it’s basically a natural non-invasive method that helps a person’s body identify stressors. So stressors could be things like food, environmental, like allergens, grass, weeds, mold, things like that, that are causing symptoms on the body or in the body and bring it back to balance or homeostasis. So how do we do this? How do we get the body to understand and bring it back to balance? So for example, if somebody comes in, let’s say you’re here and you’re like, I have a really terrible time with grass and weeds and molds. So usually how the body gets out of balance is that you’re in a state of stress and then the body says, what’s going on during this state of stress?
So maybe you were walking your dog through the park and you were on the phone with your mom and you heard some really stressful news, and all of a sudden you develop this intolerance to grass because the body tries to protect itself. So it wants to block everything that happened during that stressful state. So you might now become intolerant to grass and also the Wi-Fi or the cell phone that you’re talking on because that’s what the body is recognizing at that time. So now the next time you go to walk your dog, all of a sudden you’re sneezing and wheezing and you have this terrible reaction. And so how do we get the body to now recognize that grass isn’t a bad thing? We need to talk to it in a language that it understands. So with BIE, there’s a machine or a unit that we use, it’s called the GSI-120 and that actually directs energy onto specific points onto the body to introduce an electromagnetic signature.
So all of our cells in the body, it’s pitch black in there. They are not looking at each other and they’re not talking to each other verbally with the English language. They all speak energetically towards one another. And so that’s what BIE does. It actually speaks the language that our cells speak in. So we introduce the grass back into the body, just the frequency of it. We’re not actually putting the grass back in the body. You know if you go for an allergy test, for example. They prick the skin and they actually put that grass or those food substances into your body and whatever thing lights up or you’ve got itchiness, then the allergist says, Oh, you’ve got an allergy to crabs or you have got an allergy to tomatoes. This actually just puts the frequency back into the body, and then once it recognizes it, it’s almost like a handshake. It’s like, Oh, nice to meet you grass. I don’t know why I’ve been recognizing you as a bad thing and it stops doing that. The body just knows to readjust. And you can do the same thing with people who might have come in with really high cholesterol, for example. The body does one or two things. We either have a deficiency of something or an excess of something, and that’s where the imbalances come in. So if someone’s like, yeah, I’ve got really high cholesterol, so we work with cholesterol and reintroduce the frequency of it and all of a sudden the body says, why have I been holding onto this? I’m going to release it. And then all of a sudden the cholesterol levels drop, or it could be when it comes to food. For example, for me, I had a terrible time with green peas. And every time I ate them, it didn’t matter what time of the day, what I paired it with, I just kept getting bloating and cramps and gas. And once I balanced myself out with peas, I no longer have any issues with them anymore. It’s like night and day. And so when I’m with a client, basically they’ll tell me what their issues are and that’ll be the focus of the session, and so I go through a series of muscle testing and that’s how we identify how that person even has an intolerance or imbalance with that item. And this isn’t something that is voodoo. They teach it at universities. It’s called applied kinesiology. It is taught; a lot of different modalities or practices use it. I think chiropractors use it as well, and basically the premise of that is if you take, let’s say peas and hold it up to a muscle and you try to apply pressure to that muscle and all of a sudden it becomes weak, it means the body has an intolerance or an imbalance or it doesn’t recognize the frequency of those peas, and that’s why the muscle is becoming weaker.
Now you put something else that the body does recognize like say tomatoes and it stays strong, then the body recognizes the frequency. And then if you think about it, if you’re eating something that your body doesn’t recognize the frequency of or it becomes weaker, what’s it doing when you’re actually ingesting that food item? No wonder you feel sicker or you become weaker when you eat it because it doesn’t know what to do with it. So once we go through all of those items, whether it’s food or environmental and we have a list of the things that you’re actually intolerant to, we put it on the machine and we balance you out for it. We kind of recreate that handshake, make an introduction with the body, and then the body’s ability to heal itself.
Sarah: That’s amazing. So I’m curious too, I’m probably going to get this wrong. GSR 1000 – is that what it was?
Kayla: It’s called the GSR-120 unit.
Sarah: 120 unit. Okay. Yeah. It sounds like it’s from Star Wars, kind of.
Kayla: It sounds so futuristic.
Sarah: R2D2. But I am totally on board with this and I just want to understand. So when you use that unit, is that kind of like an electrical stimulation sensation that people will feel on their skin?
Kayla: Good question. Okay. So if you almost picture like a car battery, where it’s got a red and a black wire coming out of it, this is kind of what the BIE machine looks like, only it’s a little bit smaller and there’s a metal plate on top and that metal plate is basically like a frequency translator. So you are imprinting electrical signatures or electromagnetic impulses into the body at a very low frequency. I think it’s so low, it’s like that of a little AA battery. You don’t actually feel anything. However, some clients will claim that when I am using the probe on different acupuncture points on the body, they can feel a bit of an energetic sensation. They sometimes can feel the energy moving in their body, but it doesn’t hurt. There’s no pain whatsoever. So while they’re there, it’s kind of a very peaceful state for them. There’s no pain, there are no needles, nothing of that nature. So some people feel nothing and some people do feel something.

How to re-balance your body to eliminate food sensitivities

Sarah: On average, how long does it take for someone …or how long did it take you for the green peas to be able to reintroduce those and balance them back out in your body? Or is it different for everybody?
Kayla: Yeah, so it is different for everybody. it depends on how weak the body is to that stressor. So sometimes it’s one session and the body’s been normalized and then usually two weeks later they’ll come back. I’ll recheck them and if the substance has held, they’re good. Holding meaning I’ll re-put it up to the muscle, I’ll check to see if it’s weak or strong. If it’s strong, it means it’s held and they’re good. Sometimes it can take multiple sessions. It can take up to four sessions or even seven to eight, depending on how intolerant that person is to that substance. A few other things though can affect someone’s body to be imbalanced, so one of those things is a person’s stress level. So if you’re somebody who’s living a very high-stress lifestyle, has a lot of worries, things could be like financial worries, marital problems, boredom, moving, things like that, the loss of a loved one. Those are very stressful situations, and how I talked about earlier is that when you’re in a state of stress, the body will want to block whatever happened during that stressful state, and so that can affect somebody’s homeostasis or balance. Also the strength of someone’s immune system. So if I’m dealing with somebody who has a really weak immune system, they might take more sessions than somebody who just has a few minor imbalances. And then hydration. That is one of the things that I check on a client before every single session. I do a unique little muscle test to check their hydration because that determines someone’s ability to hold for this session and future sessions. So I always remind them to drink before a session and I also check the hydration levels when they come in.
Sarah: Yeah. Super cool. This is just for me, it’s bringing up all these people who are on the autoimmune paleo protocol and have been down to 10, 7, 11 foods, just kind of like you were in the hospital, cause you just didn’t have very much variation. You were just rotating these foods over and over again, and how it might help some of those people reintroduce foods that are healthy like squash, but maybe that their body is having this reaction to. And then I also started thinking about myself and I still experience quite a few food intolerances, but one of my new ones is sugar. I cannot tolerate sugar, even in the smallest amounts and it’s a new thing, a new phase of my life where even one whole apple, oh my gosh, it puts me out.
I can’t eat even high sugar fruits. So I had half an apple a month or two ago and it sent me into a panic attack, and so when you were talking about that, I was thinking about, okay, when was I eating that gluten-free chocolate cake or whatever sugar that I had that experience or that event that was maybe a panic attack or maybe some trauma. I’ve had a fair amount of trauma in the past few years. Just so interesting. Now you have my wheels turning and spinning, but I also wanted to ask you, so there’s this BIE, this bioenergetic side of your personal healing with this ulcerative colitis. What are some of your other favorite tools in your toolbox?

Kayla: Oh, that’s a really good question. So for me, exercise has been a really big component to my healing. I think both on a physical level, but a mental level as well. A few years ago I experienced burnout. My anxiety, went through the roof and I totally crashed, and part of that recovery was the gym, was working out. My acupuncturist at the time, she had this program called the energy make-over. Got to love these energy things, right? Like energy make-over.
Sarah: All the rage, yeah!
Kayla: I love it. I love it. So she had this thing called the energy make-over and it’s a six week program. You can work out from home and I started doing it, and then I kept doing it every six weeks and again and again and again. And now she actually launches a new program every six weeks and I just keep resigning up. And I’ve now graduated from working out at home to the gym. but it’s kind of my form of meditation. I’m a type A person and I find meditating and doing yoga extremely hard to sit still and just be, and so my form of meditation is getting up and going to the gym, putting on a good playlist, and just having a good sweat session first thing in the morning, and that sets my tone for the entire day. And so I find that really calming and healing for me, even though, you know, doing a squat is not really that calming, but you know what I mean? I don’t know. For me it just kind of sinks. I also just like going for walks. I have a dog and Nala and I and my husband, we love going for walks and just getting out there, we actually have a really cool park behind her house and it’s got a huge forest and massive trees, so it’s nice to get out there and just be grounded with nature.
And then cooking is such a huge factor in my life I think because when I got out of the hospital that’s all I did, is I learned how to cook food again. I used to think that buying low-fat diet type sauces and chips and things like that was healthy eating. I did, and it wasn’t until I went on this SCD diet where it’s like no preservatives, no additives can’t eat from a can, can’t buy anything store-bought or premade, must make everything from scratch. That was my life for two years. So I learned how to remake all of my favorite foods from scratch. It was like, okay, how do I cook a butter chicken? Oh, okay. You just take tomatoes and you blend them, add onions, add spices. I learned how to make everything from scratch. Things that I thought was so impossible, like how do you make these things actually were a lot more simple than I thought. And so cooking is a really good way for me to just unwind and reconnect.
Sarah: Yeah. Awesome. Going back to the exercise a little bit, did you find that you had to kind of work your way up? I know you said home workout then the gym workouts, but I know I’ve experienced and many other women with autoimmune disease experience some exercise intolerance. So is that kind of a slowly integrate into your routine type of thing for you?
Kayla: No actually, I’ve been okay when it comes to exercise. I haven’t had issues affecting my ulcerative colitis and exercise. I think actually the more that I work out and keeping that regiment five days a week or four days a week type of thing has really helped with my anxiety, with my UC, so I haven’t actually experienced that myself, but I know a lot of people have because it just becomes really draining on their energy and then kind of starts to trigger their autoimmune to flare, if you will, again. but I guess I’ve been lucky that it hasn’t been a component for me, so I’ve been able to work out without it having an impact on my colitis.
Sarah: Awesome. Is your dog named after Lion King?
Kayla: Oh, Nala. I guess it’s not. It’s not that she’s named after Lion King, but she looks like a lion. She’s a cross between a Pomeranian and a Shih Tzu, so she’s just got this huge fluffy mane and so it kind of was fitting with the way she looks like a lion.
Sarah: Are there pictures of her on your Instagram?
Kayla: Yeah, she does make an appearance every now and again.
Sarah: Okay everyone, if you need to see a picture of this adorable dog, go on Instagram at balanced by Kayla and you will find Nala and Kayla too of course. Okay. So let’s talk about dance parties for a second because I’ve seen you dancing on your Instagram too and I dance on my Instagram because I want to empower women to not only move their bodies, but be weird and not give a fuck what they look like and just put on their favourite song and really that’s a form of meditation for me too. It’s just dancing and letting my body be free and it’s a form of release. I feel like when I just like let my arms flail out, I’m releasing some of this toxic energy and old past energies. So what is dancing like for you? What role does it play in your life?
Kayla: That’s awesome. I’m so glad you asked that. It’s weird. It all started, I was working downstairs in my basement, and you know when you hit a series of songs that it’s like the next one, after the next one, after the next one, and you’re just so jacked up and pumped up because every single song was better than the last one and you just feel like dancing? So I did. I just came upstairs and kept the music going, put it on, put it on Instagram, and just started dancing in front of the camera, and sent it off into the world. And I didn’t know how people were going to respond to it, but it’s become a daily ritual now. Now I literally look forward to doing that, and some mornings when I don’t want to get out of bed and get up and go to the gym, I’m like, no, I have to dance. I have to do this, and then on days when I actually miss it like today and a few times last week, I get people messaging me being like, what happened to the dance this morning?
Sarah: Oh, what happened to your day? Yeah, I love watching it.
Kayla: Yeah. So it’s become like a really fun thing for me and I’m older now. I’m 31 years old. I don’t go to the clubs like I used to, but I used to go to the clubs because I loved to dance. I legitimately love music. I love listening to music in the car. I love listening to music when I work out and I feel like it has an energetic component to it. Even when I was in the hospital, there were songs I used to listen to every morning as a form of prayer and they weren’t prayer songs, meditation songs with the gong and whatever else. They were just songs where the words sent goose bumps throughout my entire body and made me reconnect with my spiritual self. And so music just, I think has that power. I think a lot of people can relate to that, that music just can move you in ways that some things can’t.
Sarah: Yeah, it stimulates your central nervous system. It has its own vibration and frequency. And maybe it’s not like you’re going to a crystal sound healing bath or listening to the gong or even the chanting. I think all of it has power regardless of genre, and I listen to … my music tastes are so weird. They’re so eclectic. They’re all over. I love country and I love some booty poppin’, shake your ass music, and I totally resonate. I’m 30 and I used to love to party – I’m just going to throw that out there – I love to dance. I would occasionally binge drink and I don’t drink anymore because of my autoimmune issues and the symptoms I’m experiencing, and it took me a long time to actually be like, okay, it’s time for me to stop drinking that red wine that I love so much, but my health is my priority and I finally did cut it out. So do you drink or not?

Having fun WITHOUT alcohol

Kayla: So it’s interesting. I’ve stopped drinking since …. well when I got diagnosed for those two years from 25 to 26 or whatever, not a sip of alcohol. I still went out with my friends, went to clubs, partied, but was the sober one, and then when I started doing BIE and became normal or I felt normal again, I started to experiment again, have that glass of wine again, have some vodka and then that kind of crept back into my life and then I guess things have come around full circle for me again, where I feel like I’m at a point now where I want to optimize my health again. I’ve kind of regressed a little bit, not to the state that I was before at all, so in December of last year, this past December, I just was like, yeah, no alcohol for now so I haven’t had any since then. I think the more that I workout and the more that I try to achieve this feeling of optimal health, it’s my own goal. I just don’t see how alcohol fits into that right now and I just don’t care to have it. I guess if I wanted to have a glass of wine or a glass of champagne that I could, but I also don’t feel like I’m missing out. If my friends invite me to go out, I’m still there until 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM. Whatever. I’m there. I just kind of get high on life and just being out with my friends and dancing. I like getting dressed up and going out. I still love all those things and I’m at a place where I’m okay with not having the alcohol be a part of that.
Sarah: Yeah, I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was. I decided to stop drinking alcohol and just October, so just a couple months before you, and I was like, Oh man, how’s this going to go? And you know it actually has gone really well, and like you said like there’s still so many other ways to have fun and enjoy life and just get high on other parts of life that are amazing. So when you are feeling like you are regressing or you get into a funk, because I think we also have those days, I still have those days, those days when you’re in a funk, what are your go-to tools? What brings you back to life?

Releasing control of your healing path

Kayla: I find during those moments that I need to be quiet and still, and it’s a time for reflection and to go inwards. So usually when things are starting to get out of whack, where like I don’t know, I’m eating things and doesn’t matter what I eat, I’m starting to get a stomach ache, things that I know I’m okay with, all of a sudden they start causing me a problem, I’m like, okay Kayla, what’s going on here? Stress levels are going up. I start to shut things out. I kind of start to narrow my focus and the focus becomes me. I might say no to certain things. I might just get a little bit quieter, not be so engaging on social media. I started to just go inward and focus on me cause that’s where it all began. Like when I was in the hospital, it was all about me. It was all about my daily meditations. It was about my daily prayers. and I guess that point in my life is how I regroup now. I’m not back in the hospital, but I use a sort of the tools that I learned then and reincorporate them now. So it might be journaling, it might be meditating, it might be going for a walk, and it might just be like simply reflecting. What’s going on in my life right now? What are my goals? Re-centering and just kind of getting back to me and kind of minimizing the noise around me, because that sometimes can lead or be a trigger to my symptoms.
As much as I love my type A socializing, putting myself out there, engaging, talking to everybody, it can also be to a detriment where it becomes too much and I have to start listening to those little cues the body’s telling me and saying, okay, let’s start to quiet down a little bit, and it’s not a bad thing, right? You’re not ignoring people. You’re taking care of yourself.
Sarah: Yeah. It’s so important to know what does trigger you too. What is your breaking point? What are your boundaries and what is your threshold for especially your energy levels? I’ve really gotten to know myself better in that arena, and it’s an episode – I can’t remember – episode two, I think I talked about the spoon theory and just talking about or knowing within yourself how many spoons do I have for this day.
Kayla: I love that one.
Sarah: Yeah. It’s a really good story kind of theory analogy to help explain energy levels. Okay. So I want to ask you about intuition a little bit. How has intuition played into both you as a practitioner and you as someone who is struggling or has struggled with chronic illness?
Kayla: So it’s interesting. I find I don’t know if it’s just because of my ulcerative colitis, but I feel everything in my gut like tenfold. So some people get different reactions. They might feel something in their chest. They may feel something in their hands or their feet. I feel everything in my gut. And so I’ve started to really tune into that, I guess because of my UC. Even people talking loudly, I could feel the vibration of that in my gut, and so as I was healing or on my healing journey, I really tuned in or tapped into that gut feeling and started to learn sequences of events or when certain things would happen, how that gut would go off or if I was faced with a decision and it’s like my head telling me something very logical, I should be able to do this. I should be able to go here or do this thing or attend this event or get all this work done, but my gut is telling me something else – loud and clear. And sometimes for me, when I don’t want to listen to that gut reaction and my brain is just like, nope, we’re doing this, that’s when the physical symptoms actually arise. That’s when my UC will actually flare up and I’ll start to experience some of those triggers or those symptoms because I’ve ignored that gut feeling for too long.
So I think for me especially as a practitioner is I always tell my clients, you have got to do what’s right for you. So sometimes they’ll be like, well, do you think I should reintroduce this or do you think I should do this? Or should I attend this event? And let’s say like stress is a big thing for them, I always tell them, you need to listen to your body and what’s going to make sense for you, cause everybody’s different. It’s not a one size fits all approach even with BIE, you have to listen to your body. We literally have an amazing system that goes on inside of us and we just have to tap in to listen to those subtle cues and we’re not really taught how to do that. When you’re driving a car, when you see a red light, you have to stop, and when it’s green you can go and when it’s yellow, you have to caution yourself. But we’re not given those same traffic light rules within the body. When you feel this, your gut is telling you to kind of tune in or when your energy is low, slow it down. We’re not really given those things, and so for me, I’ve learned to just tune into my gut feeling and try to relay those types of messages and transferable experiences to my clients.
Sarah: Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. Is there anything else that you want to tell the listeners today? Anything that’s been super helpful for you? Eye opening? Any aha moments or just some takeaway messages?
Kayla: Well, there was something that you mentioned about the autoimmune tribe and people who are following the AIP protocol. The thing with BIE and what I’ve learned, it’s not even foods or grass and pollen and things like that. What I’ve learned, it’s actually the things within the food. So it could be like fats and oils and that’s why you have a problem with nuts or chicken. You know, chicken breast that had the skin on it, cause our bodies can actually become intolerant to those specific things, like even our B vitamins or hormones or the sugars that you were mentioning earlier. And so sometimes when we think we have a problem with a food group, it’s actually not the food itself, it’s what the foods actually made up of. And so a lot of what I do with my clients is kind of start with a baseline and then work our way up. I don’t even touch food until I’ve worked through the baseline with my clients because half the time it’s not even the food that’s the problem. It’s what’s inside the food, like the sugars, like the amino acids within the food that’s actually an issue for them. I guess what I like to leave people with is that if you’ve been on a certain path and it’s not working for you, accept it and be okay with it and try something else. I was so fixated on the fact that the SCD diet had to work for me, and I stayed on it for two years religiously, and while it gave me the building blocks to understand healthy eating and that was phenomenal, it wasn’t the be-all, end-all for me and I needed to be open to listening to something else. And so it may be BIE for you. It may be something else, but just be open to different modalities because it’s not a one size fits all and BIE wasn’t the sole thing for me either. I worked with many different practitioners, so don’t feel like you have to just stick with your naturopath or just stick with your chiropractor, your massage therapist. Use them all, each one of them. Each one of those modalities really has something you need to bring to the table. So stay open to it.
Sarah: Awesome. Yeah. Build that tribe.
Kayla: Exactly.
Sarah: Where can everyone find you on all the social medias and if they want to work with you, your website. Let’s hear it all.
Kayla: Awesome. So on social, on Insta for example, I’m @balancedbyKayla and my website is balancedbykayla.com.
Sarah: Perfect. Thank you so much for joining me today. A pleasure to have you. I’ll see you at those dance parties on Instagram.
Kayla: Thanks, Sarah
Sarah: Thank you so much for joining me for today’s episode. If you loved this episode and want to support the creation of future episodes, please leave a five-star review below. I also love to hear from you on social media. Screenshot this episode and tag me on Instagram or Facebook @autoimmune tribe. Thanks again for listening. See you next time.

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