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Ann Jarvis: [00:00:00] Anyone with any kind of autoimmune tissue where your own immune system begins attacking the otherwise healthy tissue of your body, sets up this whole sort of drama within the whole system of: I am in a battle with myself of some kind. I have begun to look at a part of myself as the enemy. And so we could break that down into, am I the enemy because I feel not good enough?
Am I the enemy because I feel unlovable? Am I the enemy because I feel like I'm guilty of something? I'm not innocent. There's now a setup in the body where the body is now mimicking this deeply held belief.
So what [00:01:00] is the invitation of the person with autoimmune disease? This notion of having a metaphorical death or a complete transformation while we're still alive. What a beautiful invitation, right? What a beautiful universal invitation.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Hi everyone. And welcome back to another episode of the Sacred Illness™ Podcast. Today I'm super excited to have Ann Jarvis on here. She is hailing from Ottawa, Canada. I think you're one of our first if our first Canadian, so welcome aboard. And I'm excited to talk to Ann today because she and I both have Crohn's disease.
And so that's part of our, our healing journey and that's where our healing journey started in terms of a diagnosis. And so I'm excited to talk to someone who also has this condition and to talk to her about what her healing journey looked like. And for Ann especially, her journey led her to a place of surrender, which I think is a [00:02:00] really big part of the healing journey.
Sometimes it can feel like giving up hopelessness, but it can be a really powerful moment depending on how we interact with it or in our in relationship with it. So I'm really excited to hear her experience of surrender in this journey and where that led from there.
So let's just get into it. Ann as we said, before we started recording, I want to just hop right into your story and hear where this starts and where we go. And so I'll hand it over to you.
Ann Jarvis: Okay. Thank you, Erin. So yeah, I was seven years old when I started getting sick and hid it from my parents for a couple of years.
And then I just was losing so much weight. It was clearly. in a lot of pain. So they've, they finally figured out something was going on with me. I went to a doctor who couldn't really, our family doctor just could not diagnose me. So it took actually until I was 10 to get a diagnosis from a wonderful [00:03:00] pediatrician.
So I finally got that diagnosis. And just got really sick. Was off and on prednisone, had my first surgery at 18. I had four more surgeries after that, including a complete removal of my large intestine. And it wasn't until I was in, it was the summer after my third year of university, I came home for the summer and something just struck me that I wasn't really jiving with my doctors.
I wasn't really jiving with the whole model. I was on really heavy duty medication. I was on immunosuppressants and prednisone. I had like huge chipmunk cheeks. And it would manage it, at best, and then sometimes not really even that. And I thought, I think there's another way here.
So I took myself to a naturopath. And the naturopath, this was so interesting. I'd [00:04:00] never been to one before. And he said to me, what time of year was it
that you got sick? And I said, oh, it was the summer. And he said, what was happening that summer? And it was just like light bulbs started going off.
And I just started to recall a dynamic within my family that I just, I was incapable of digesting literally at that time, and also just starting to realize as a super sensitive, empathic being that I was super porous, right? Which is always so interesting because I think, life imitates art, bodies imitate personality, right?
We've got these porous, leaky guts. And I was this super porous person who then didn't know what to do with the inputs that that were coming in. And I just didn't do anything. I just stuffed it. I just, people would say to me, how are you doing? And I'd be like, I'm fine. How [00:05:00] are you? I was just never wanted the attention on me that way with any kind of vulnerability.
So I started working with myself and that was that first revelation was just so huge that our environment and the way we take in our environment can really make or break us. And then fast forward a few years after I had my huge bowel surgery. Where I had my large bowel removed completely.
I have an ileostomy pouch that I wear on my side. I will for the rest of my life. I met an energy healer. My mom actually put me in touch with an energy healer. And, I, my session with her was just, it was like, I had no idea what to expect. She got me on her table and she [00:06:00] said, I can see energy.
I've always been able to see energy myself, but I would not have put words to that. I just didn't. It just wasn't a big deal to me because I had always seen energy for my whole life. So this woman got me up on her table and she said, okay, let's just get something out of the way. And she started tapping on my chest and this huge burst of emotion
came flying out and it was, I had no control over it whatsoever. And then I felt like this absolute relief. And she was like, okay, now that's out of the way, we can talk. I was like, what just happened here? This is nuts. So after seeing her, I was engaged to my then fiance, and we got married.
So I moved here to Ottawa and I was working for the government and it was really soul sucking and I knew I couldn't [00:07:00] stay there. And so I dove into energetic healing and I started taking courses and I started working with clients. And as I started working with clients, I started working more with myself.
And one of the first sort of really big obstacles within myself that I bumped up against, and then I started noticing it in my clients, especially people with autoimmune disease, was this substantial need for self control. So not wanting to control anyone else, but just no, I'm fine. No, it's good.
Holding things down. If, if a body could be clenched up, my body was just so clenched up. And I started looking at what would be the opposite of control? And at first I thought it would just be, untethered [00:08:00] vulnerability. That was what, that was where my mind went, to this space of really not feeling safe.
Because of course, everything within the system that comes up that is dysfunctional, we start to find out, is not doing it to hurt you, it's doing it to protect you, right? So this control piece was there as a protection, but after a while it just no longer works. It starts to bump up against just against your life against your lived reality.
And I had one of my first I'm one of those people that's prone to, I guess what you would call transcendent or mystical experiences. They've all been non drug related. I haven't been on acid or anything like that. They've just out of the blue happened. And they've, every time it's happened it's irrevocably changed my experience of myself [00:09:00] and life.
And so the first one I'm going to tell this one because it had a really, this was a turning point in my embrace of surrender. So my husband and I had left the Ottawa area on my insistence. I had decided that we were trying to get pregnant and I had decided that I wanted to raise a family where I grew up in this little town about four hours away from Ottawa. And so we left, we went, and then life just ushered us back as life, right?
Life just decides for us, right? But I didn't know that then and I was trying to, commandeer and steer and everything else. So we came back to Ottawa and I still wasn't pregnant yet. And I was, I fell into a huge depression, which was out of the blue for me. I was very used to feeling nervous and anxious, but not depressed.
That was just so new. And of course, at that [00:10:00] time, I'd been 10, 12 years into an energy, intuitive energy healing practice. So I had all kinds of tools in my toolkit and I was pulling one after the other out and none of them were working of course. And so I remember one day I was sitting at home by myself and I could just feel that bubbling of helplessness start to bubble again. And it was so uncomfortable and I started looking, I think I just purchased a Donna Eden book on tapping or meridian healing or something like that. And I was looking around for it and I was feeling super hysterical and this really calm voice spoke to me and it just said: Ann, stop.
And I always say to people when I tell this story, when spirit speaks to you, you never need an interpreter. You always know exactly what [00:11:00] is meant by that. And the "Ann, stop" meant stop fighting this. Just stop. And in that moment, it's this little foundation, or floor, that had been holding up, propping up this depression, it's like the whole floor just gave out. And it literally felt an internal freefall. Like I was just freefalling. And I, there was a letting go. There was just a complete letting go. And I was just letting go. And I remember I actually hit what felt like a bottom, what felt like the exhausted or exhaustive part of this.
But when I hit the bottom, I was, it was like I was overcome with bliss. Complete bliss, opposite of the depression. Like the polar opposite. It [00:12:00] was just full on bliss. And I have no idea how long that took. That, that could have taken two minutes. It could have taken a half an hour. I don't, I couldn't tell you.
But when I opened my eyes the depression was gone and it never came back. That felt totally miraculous to me, and it was such, that, that was a huge turning point, because I had just gripped so hard and tried so hard for so long to heal both myself and my clients and was looking at the problem and going to the problem and this was a whole new paradigm shift of letting go of surrender and what might happen if we stop fighting what is here and simply let it be. [00:13:00] So that was really huge. And that really reoriented my whole orientation. Fast forward. So a few years ago during COVID I'd been well for a really long time. I got really well when I was pregnant with my first child. Our daughter she's 14 now. So this is 15 years ago and I've been well for so long.
And a few years ago during COVID COVID felt really uncomfortable for me. Everything about the whole thing just felt so uncomfortable. I thought about it a little bit differently than other people and that felt uncomfortable. I don't like feeling like I'm on the outside looking in. Anyway, I went into another flare.
And by this time, I'm now also a holistic nutritionist because I saw how, valuable food and, what we put into our bodies, just the effect that has on especially a gut based autoimmune, any autoimmune disease, but especially [00:14:00] a gut based autoimmune disease. And even the food portion was not really working for me at this point.
So last fall, again, I had been trying everything. I've got this huge toolkit at my disposal. I know a lot of wonderful people, a lot of wonderful healers. And again, I had exhausted kind of everything. I was at home by myself. And I had a moment, because I've learned you can't do surrender.
Surrender can't be done. It has to be done, almost done to you. I just remembered doing a little shout out to the universe. So I would refer to the universe as God, but what, whatever, some people say consciousness or source or life or whatever.[00:15:00]
But I had this conversation with God, and I always tell people when I get into these contemplative or prayerful spaces, I have to feel 100 percent about something, and if I do, there's always a response. There's always a response. Something always comes back in, but it has to feel, I can't be 98 percent of the way there, I have to be 100 percent of the way there, and I just said, I'm done.
I'm done trying to manage this, trying to fix this, I can't do this, whatever this is, anymore. You take it. I'm giving this to you, and not only am I giving you my Crohn's, but I'm giving you my marriage, I'm giving you the way I mother our daughter, I'm giving you my service in the world. [00:16:00] I'm tired.
I'm exhausted by really life. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm not managing this anymore. I thought I could, so take it. And then I got up off the floor, and I carried on with my day, and I forgot about it. And the next day, I, I got my daughter on the bus, and I sat down in our bedroom, Just to sit.
I I was just trying to sit and just be quiet. I don't think I had even really remembered the offering from the day before. And I started to get feedback. And that feedback was really clear. And it was essentially, not essentially, it was, okay I will take this from you but [00:17:00] you need to give yourself formally over.
And I knew what that meant. Again, when spirit speaks to you just don't need an interpretation. And I knew that. That meant that I was going to have to come formally to some sort of faith. And that made me really uncomfortable. Because I've always believed in God. I've, I've always believed in God.
But I've never wanted to be religious on any level. I have fancied myself intellectually superior to religion and its components and its offerings. My mind has had formed this idea of little old ladies knitting in a basement of a church and it was just, it just felt shallow and I just thought, Oh, okay.
Anyway, [00:18:00] I began to dive in a little bit. deeper and I, I put my preconceived notions on the shelf for a moment. And it became really clear that I was completely wrong. I still don't know why that was what was asked of me, but I can tell you in the last six or seven months, it's completely new.
So I'm, And I'm not here to evangelize to anyone, that is for sure. I think the whole point of surrender is you ask to have your own path lit up in the way that it would be lit up, right? So I don't know why I have been brought here, but I do know I've never felt more lit up. I'm actually trying less with the Crohn's, with, all of my dietary restrictions that I've had in place for [00:19:00] 15 years. And as I try less, I feel better. And my mind can't quite reconcile that. But here we are. And then, and Erin, you and I were, I sent you this really interesting article a couple of weeks ago.
So this is an article I found actually a couple of years ago. I think I found it maybe during COVID and it just, it blew me away. So this is a PubMed published medical article on a deeper interpretation of autoimmunity and what it means to be a self that is in battle with the self, right?
And there's a line, there's a line from this article that I'd love to read out because it's one that was really poignant to me and it really stuck out. [00:20:00] It said, so it says for the individual with connective tissue disease, the dilemma posed by autoimmunity is a new ontological challenge. It represents the transformation of the individual self while the organism is still alive.
A Jungian psychologist would say that the locus of agency has been ungrounded. This transformation is a metaphorical death of the individual self. To me and I'd love to hear your interpretation of this. But to, for me, that was so huge because, so here we are, any, anyone with any kind of autoimmune tissue where your own immune system begins attacking the otherwise healthy tissue of your body, sets up this whole sort of drama [00:21:00] within the whole system of I am in a battle with myself of some kind. I have begun to look at a part of myself as the enemy. And so we could break that down into, am I the enemy because I feel not good enough?
Am I the enemy because I feel unlovable? Am I the enemy because I feel like I'm guilty of something? I'm not innocent. There's now a setup in the body where the body is now mimicking this deeply held belief. Because so many of us hold the belief, I'm not good enough, let's say, or I'm unlovable, but don't go on to create, connective tissue disease in their body, right?
So what is the invitation of the person with [00:22:00] autoimmune disease? Because if you're not looking at the self as a whole within a bigger whole, this won't make any sense to you. However, I think so many of us have been brought to the point where we have no choice but to look at the self as a whole within a bigger whole.
And this notion of having a metaphorical death or a complete transformation while we're still alive. What a beautiful invitation, right? What a beautiful universal invitation. That's come down the pipe for us. And the article talks a little bit also about I think it does, or maybe I just extracted this I believe it references Soren Kierkegaard it sort of philosophical thoughts on all of this, [00:23:00] which are, we've got a whole self or what I would call a divine self,
and then we've got a smaller self, right? So we've got both the divine and the human that have come together in this one package known as me or you or anyone else walking around and It seems to me that the whole point of this human experiment is to reconcile, bring together the two, and that perhaps in the autoimmune soul, that is a more prescient issue.
That is a more urgent dilemma that has been presented to us. And I think what a how lucky are we in some sense, right? That this has expedited this issue that every human being [00:24:00] will deal with at some point along the continuum, right? And so that has me thinking a lot. And meditating a lot and praying a lot these days on rather than looking at the problems.
Breaking the problems down, what should I be eating, first of all, that's my big one, I'm almost obsessed with what should I be eating, or, how much sun should I be getting, or how much Epsom salts should I put in my bag, or, whatever, what homeopathic remedy could I possibly be taking next month. And, I, I practice this, so I'm not dismissing any of it. I think it's hugely important and helpful, however, to maybe come back to what has always been innocent, what has always been good enough, [00:25:00] and what has always been lovable because it is love itself, right? So that's really where my orientation has come to.
And I still, I'm so new, I'm not good at it, I still don't understand it, but it has really lit me up in a huge way. And it's really starting to shift a felt sense within this body mind.
Dr. Erin Hayford: My gosh, what a just powerful, beautiful story. Those of us with autoimmunity, there is this shared collective experience for what you had just touched on in the very last bit, how there's this reconciliation that is happening.
And also just how we get autoimmunity in the first place, so to speak, where there is that fracturing of self. And just, there's so many things in your story that felt very similar to mine and I have found to be true with folks I have [00:26:00] worked with and other folks I've interviewed on here. It's so comforting to hear someone so assuredly and groundedly and calmly speak to this story and just give it such a beautiful message.
So thank you for that.
This idea of surrender being so crucial to healing in general, because it is this, I love what you had said about you. It's not like you choose to do it, it's given to you, or it's just something that you are, you arrive at after a series of trial and error. But there's just this idea to surrender where essentially you're just allowing what is to be. And you're not fighting it. You're not denying it. I think so much of quote unquote healing journeys or obviously the medical world in general is all about getting away from something, like trying desperately to get away from something, to bury it, to suppress it, to end it, to whatever.
If your goal is to just eradicate, then you're missing [00:27:00] that, what is it there? You're missing the fact that it's there in the first place, you're missing that first step of but why is it here?
Why is it here in the first place? And when you surrender, you have no choice, but to look at that right in the eyes and say, okay, fine. Here I am. What do you want? Why are you here? And when you do that as you experienced multiple times, like that's when you finally, you get it, like things start to click and you start to feel that release.
And obviously, yes, that story of your depression just disappearing that's a miracle, right? That's what we refer to as miracles. And I have been privy to that in my private practice only a couple of times, but I've seen it happen where, when someone surrenders to what is in their body and is just finally hearing the message or understanding the message things go away.
Why this is called Sacred Illness™, the podcast is called Sacred Illness™ because it is a sacred communication. It's the sacred, whatever that is for you, right? God universe spirit. Trying to say tune in and stop, like [00:28:00] what it said to you when you had depression, and when we finally stop that's that's where we can hear, and I think we forget that communication is talking, yes, but it's also listening. And I think we forget to listen a lot. We just keep talking, so to speak, like through modalities or, we just keep trying to like action our way through it, talk and figure it out and all that.
But we forget to the other side of it sometimes is to stop and listen.
I think if anyone, if people need to know one thing, this is it. Like this is what they need to hear and how they come to listening and what they, how they learn to listen and all of that is, step two. But it's a very intuitive process. It's really, like you said, less is more. Less is more. You don't need anything fancy to learn how to listen.
Ann Jarvis: Yes. And as you were just talking, Erin, what really. What strikes me in the moment as I'm surrendering, I can see it in the moment.
And then of course, my mind forgets about it really quickly. But even if you think about what surrender does to your nervous system, [00:29:00] right? The energy of surrender in a nervous system that is already primed really differently, right? Because the whole package, again, if we look at the whole person The nervous system, the immune system, and the psychology of that person, which is, a new ish area of study, psychoneuroimmunology, which I know you would be familiar with.
Even just the act of surrender on the nervous system, right? So this trying and trying to fix or eradicate or get rid of, or what have you, requires and so many of us, maybe not all of us, but requires an amped up nervous system, right? Because you're gripping you're trying to get to the finish line when you're nowhere close to the finish line, right?
So even what surrender does with your nervous system, just to relax into what is here right now, because what is here right [00:30:00] now is not a mistake. It can't possibly be. If we look at even just the patterns of nature, nothing is out of line. Nothing is a mistake. And we, we really are just we're a pattern.
We're more a pattern than we are a person. A very unique pattern. And if that pattern has a particular expression at a particular time, you can trust that's precisely what needs to be there, right? So calming down, letting go, letting it be exactly as it is without actually needing to find any cure in that moment is, in and of itself, so healing, right?
That is a healing response, a really elevated response. healing response to a hurting body.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Yes. And that's one of the [00:31:00] things that I, that's my, one of my core messages is bodies don't fail, they respond. It's always a response to something, right? It's not a fluke. It's not everything is great and then suddenly the tire goes flat for no reason, like something is happening. There's a nail that's poking the tire. The tire doesn't just implode for no reason, it's no different. We're, much more beautiful and intricate than a car, but it's to use a simple metaphor.
But yet what you said is It's like that idea that control it's yeah. Control is essentially telling our nervous system, something isn't safe, right? We're not safe. And so we're trying to control. We're trying to bring in safety through muscling and efforting our way. What if I try this diet or if I do this and I do that and all these protocols and all these things.
And yeah. Again, absolutely. They have a time and a place and holistic health is one that, brings all sorts of things to the table, but the way I think about what we're talking about is there's a foundation that has to be set or all those things that you're piling on top, you're building a house on sand.
If you're ignoring, if you're ignoring that foundational element of [00:32:00] why is this illness here? What's the communication? What's the message? And it's, that corny saying, but It's a saying for a reason that surrender is actually more like brave or strong or it takes more courage to surrender than it does to control and to, effort your way through.
If you actually let go, it's very vulnerable. It's scary. And I can't tell you how many times people will say to me I think, I'm worried I'm missing something. If I surrender, if I stop pursuing the next lab test or if I don't take the next supplement or whatever what if that's the thing, there's that fear there of what if that external thing is the answer.
And I think that's, that's the Western mindset that we've all been indoctrinated with for lack of a better word, but we've grown up in this Western mindset medical paradigm, that the answer is outside of us, that it's in a pill bottle or it's in a surgery or it's in this or it's in that. And again, sure, those things will help, can help, might help, but the true answer as to why the illness is here is not out there.
It's an internal, mind, body, spirit experience [00:33:00] that you have to surrender to get to.
And that question that you were asked by your naturopath. It's funny I tell my story all the time about my, my healing journey. And I forgot until now that I was asked that exact same question by the first naturopath that I worked with.
What were you doing the summer you got sick? Cause it was summer when I got sick as well. I was older, I was in my twenties or, late teens, early twenties, but same idea. He asked me that question and help me put the pieces together. It was the first time I had thought of illness as being a response as like a cause and effect.
So I think that's a really crucial question that we should all ask ourselves. What was going on either when I got sick or leading up to when I got sick. And sometimes people will say nothing, everything was fine, but if you really dig, there's always this little straw. Sometimes it's a tiny, little, tiny straw that pushes you over the edge, but there's something there that pushes you.
And I think for, like you were saying, people with Crohn's there's that, or autoimmunity in general, [00:34:00] there's that fear of vulnerability and I'm the exact was and continue to work on being that way of everything's fine. Everything's fine. Don't worry. Don't look at me, look over there. And it's funny you say it's In that particular way, you don't want to be seen because I think, we want to be seen in certain ways, but there's something about being seen as a sick person or, admitting that something is wrong emotionally that felt particularly uncomfortable.
So I guess I'm curious for you, it sounds like with your newfound is this is modern or most recently right that you've started to have a religious practice and move in that direction.
Is that helping for you to continue to let go of control? Is that a dance that you're continuing to engage with or how does that look for you? Cause I think that is a hard thing to fully let go of for anyone.
Ann Jarvis: Yeah. Oh, it is. It's and so many of us, it's just so hardwired, right? I'm still trying, really trying to, and I probably will be for a while, I'm still trying to parse apart why this needed to be the [00:35:00] journey. I still find it slightly embarrassing, if I'm being honest, because we've really, I think our Western society has really fancied ourselves this, highly intellectual, secular society that doesn't need to be told what to do, which of course is not how it is, but told what to do by, a religion steeped in doctrine, let's say.
That's just not been my experience with this whatsoever. And I think for me, This why it needed to be formal in that I'm going to church most Sundays, I'm praying every morning, I'm talking to God every day. That is the surrender setup, right? That there is now just this constant reminder [00:36:00] in my life that I am not my own source.
I am of a source that I see as the highest and that source loves me unconditionally, right? I don't have to do or be anything in order to get approval, love, validation. That's our human setup, and that's completely understandable because it's just what we learn from the time we're little, and that's just passed down generation to generation.
But that's not this relationship. I'll share with you another, again, what I would call a transcendent or mystical experience that I had specifically with the Crohn's. This was about 18 years ago, and this was the first time that faith really blew the door open for me, and then [00:37:00] of course I closed it, afterwards, but so I have an ostomy, there's certain things I can't eat or really shouldn't eat, and I ended up eating a bag of popcorn
Oh no. Which was like, just I know. Even if you don't have an ostomy and you have Crohn's disease, it's such a No-No, but it's bad. Yeah for someone, for someone with an ostomy, it's like a triple No-No. So anyway, I ended up developing a severe blockage. I had to go in the hospital, I had to have emergency surgery to take out this twisted part of my bowel.
And I came home and that was. What surgery was that? That was my fifth Crohn's surgery. And I had always recovered really quickly and really well. At the time I was still in my early thirties, so I was in good shape and I wasn't in a flare at the time. I just did something really stupid and ate a bag of popcorn.
So I came home and of course I have this, huge midline incision that had been, [00:38:00] reopened to do this last surgery. And the incision had started opening up, which was just scaring the hell out of me because I thought what, do I have to go do they have to re suture this? This is just a mess.
Anyway, I ended up phoning an energy healer friend of mine. And I said, I am not doing well. I'm wondering if you can just in whatever way fit, helping me out. She had me do this, almost like a meditative little journey. So on this meditative journey, I hopped on the back of a little hummingbird.
Of course, this is just all, in my mind's eye. And she said, you're going to take a little journey. And we're just flying through the air and I look down and I see this really old burlap bag and it's full of jewels like sapphires and rubies and emeralds.
And on top was a huge gold cross [00:39:00] embedded with more of these jewels. And so I told her, I said, this is what I'm seeing. And she said, okay, go down. And obviously it's trying to tell you something, go and check it out. So I went down and I'm looking at this cross. And then I looked up and it was just in the woods somewhere and I looked up and I saw Jesus on the cross and I told her and she said, take him down.
So I did. I took him down and there was a log on the ground. And so we sat down, and my first response was to give him comfort. Obviously, he'd just been on the cross, and I turned to him to offer him comfort, and he looked at me, and just the, unfathomable, selfless [00:40:00] love that came beaming out of him completely undid me.
I was sobbing. I just kept saying, his love is so selfless. It was almost like too much. It was overwhelming. And it was just, it was unlike anything I had ever felt in my life. So the little meditation ended, the session ended, and I was just okay, that was, like, I couldn't wrap my head around it, of course.
Anyway, I hopped into a bath, a very shallow bath, after that I just wanted to sit in something warm. And I looked down at my incision, this incision that had started opening up, and I noticed, I hadn't noticed it before, a piece of suture sticking out of my incision. And it was about an inch long. And I went, oh, I hadn't noticed that before, I hadn't seen it before.
And so I [00:41:00] pulled on it, and it was quite long, like it ended up being seven, eight inches long, and I thought, I really hope I just didn't like, rip out an internal suture. And when I took it out I got up, out of the bath, I dried off, and I looked back down at my incision, and it had knitted itself back together.
Oh my gosh. A minute or two. And again, I went, I don't know what this is. I don't understand this. But that was another little signpost along the way. A, you are not in control. B there is something else here for you that is, I don't know, I would call it otherworldly, that's just, I don't know.
waiting for you. That's just come closer to me. You don't have to do this all by yourself, and you can't. You [00:42:00] just, you can't. And to keep trying is utterly futile.
So that was really the first time this faith this divine, relationship healing really stepped in, and as I said, I just, I, after I, I got better, I closed the door again. I didn't think much of it, but it just, in little ways, it just kept coming back. And so where I sit now is I'm really just trying to uncover what could be here for people who are dealing with a crisis of self, right?
Where the self that is trying to help the other self that's diseased, let's say you could use this in like a cancer model as well, right? Where you're otherwise [00:43:00] healthy cells will not stop replicating, right? They're just, they're out of control replicating. And so this self that's trying to help the self, but it's trying to help through means of control and containment and eradication and just fix it.
And often I laugh often when I hear people say healing, I think, Oh, but you mean just, you just want it to go away. Let's just be honest. And there's nothing wrong. Of course, we don't want to feel like this. Of course we want it to go away. That's okay. I don't think there's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah. But let's not mistake our sentiment of healing for really healing it. We want it to go away, and that's okay. However it's, for me, it's just starting to take shape that the self that's trying to fix and control all the moving parts, it [00:44:00] can't do it alone. It can't do it alone. And, there's a a writer.
He's not here anymore. He wrote a lot about a relationship with the sacred. And he wrote that we're all wired for worship. So if we're not worshiping the highest thing that I would call God, again, someone else might call it consciousness, or the unified field, or the universe, whatever. He said if we're not worshiping the highest, we will worship the next highest down.
So what might that be for people? That might be money? It might be politics. It might be romantic love. It might be approval. It might be reputation. And that, that's I think where we start to get into a little bit of trouble, right? Because that will always come [00:45:00] with, a, a shelf life, right? We'll all get old and die, every single one of us.
And it's conditional. It's very conditional, right? So where could we go that is unconditional? I only know of one place. If someone else can tell me of somewhere or something else, I'd be completely open to listening to it. But I only know of one place.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I am always like the part of my, whatever you want to call it constitution or complex or whatever is the people pleaser.
So I'm always like, don't say too much in this direction or don't be too dogmatic or don't whatever. But truly what I've come to in this work is, eventually you come up against this idea of purpose. Why are we here? What's life all about? Inevitably it gets you asking those bigger questions of, what is that bigger thing?
What is that bigger [00:46:00] love or that bigger force connecting us and I think that there's enough of us have had those experiences, whether you call it intuition or just straight up miracles, miraculous experiences. I was chuckling when you were talking about and then I closed the door again and I didn't come back around to thinking about, I don't know if you've seen on online, but it's I need a sign-ier sign. It's sometimes it's so right there, but we're just constantly
like, well,
no, that can't be it.
But I think that's a very good point to make is let's differentiate between healing versus just feeling better because feeling better is this idea of I just want to get back to life.
I just want to, get rid of that and just keep going down this track I'm on. Healing is transformational. It's saying I am no longer going to be who I am. It's that death, right? It's the death of the self. Whoever you are has to die in order to make way for the new.
And when that process is happening, when you're transforming, it gets harder and harder to ignore that there's something else. There's a bigger force, a bigger something at play, right? The pieces are moving in a certain way, things are coming together in a certain way.
Healing [00:47:00] is getting back to yourself self and yourself has purpose, it's that sacred illness, sacred purpose, sacred meaning. It's all there driving you to basically become who you came into this world to be. And from, from my perspective, it's, we're all part of this story that's evolving in a certain direction.
And, we're trying to get back to that divine love, that kind of birthright of being okay, being enough, being exactly perfect and beautiful and good, just as you are. And we're trying to get back to that place of vulnerability and acceptance so that we can just exist and be happy and be in loving communities and be in loving relationship with each other.
But so much gets in the way of that, and then we get sick and we get disconnected. And I think disconnect is one of the biggest drivers of disease. We disconnect from God. We disconnect from ourselves. We disconnect from our communities because we get hurt, we get scared.
I think it is coming back to this idea of reconnecting and trusting that those [00:48:00] intuitions trusting that those gut feelings trusting that, deep in yourself is this intuitive divine being.
Essentially, like you said, it's the it's you know, we're part of that bigger hole. And coming toward that and not getting not going back to what's familiar and staying the course because it's scary. It's very scary to stay open and vulnerable and trusting.
Going back to what we were saying, that question of what was going on when you got sick; for me on a emotional psychological level I was, late teens, early twenties. I was partying a lot. I was hanging out with a bunch of people trying to just be them. I was trying to really desperately fit in and trying to whatever it was, whatever you do at that age, which is normal developmental stuff. But for me, it was this lifelong pattern of, like I said, people pleasing and becoming someone I wasn't just desperately trying to fit in, trying to find my place. And what I have been recognizing a lot lately is this feeling of belonging that just did not exist in me.
Like I didn't feel like I fit in didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. And there was something in that article and let me open [00:49:00] it cause I took a screenshot of it: "The patient with autoimmunity can no longer rely on a privileged sense of the self as being unique and separate from the hostile world.
In other words, autoimmunity dismantles a lifetime of maturing individual, individuation and asserts in no uncertain terms that you do not belong." And so for me, I felt so unbelonging in my own life and disconnected from everything. It was like, my immune system was like, okay, then.
I guess your body doesn't belong. And the article talks about that. I think it's such a fascinating and good point. It's when we get an organ transplant and the immune system rejects it, because it's not self, it's that same idea.
It's like, well then I guess this is not you. So I'm going to reject you and attack you. So I was actually curious about that as I was reading that if you had an experience of not belonging. I know you had touched on there was you don't have to get into the details, but generally, is there a sense of not belonging of disconnect?
Is that part of your story as well? I'm just curious if there's a through thread there.
Ann Jarvis: Yes, [00:50:00] huge, absolutely huge. If I could, bring up a picture, like a mental picture of myself, it would be literally on the outside of a window looking in while the party raged on inside without me, right?
That's just, yes, it's huge. Huge. And yeah, feeling just disconnected and I don't know that, I think for me from a very early age, feeling like I just couldn't bring my authentic self to the table because I wasn't sure that it would either be seen or acceptable, right? And so I just, I shut it down.
I just shut it down. And I so relate to also, as you mentioned, for you being in my late teens, early twenties, going off to university, partying harder than anyone else in an [00:51:00] effort to prove I'm okay. I'm not sick. I can do what you do and I can do more of what you do. I can do it better. I can drink more than anyone here.
I can do it, right? Yeah. And it's just, I look back and I just think I have so much empathy for that young woman because it came from a place of just wanting to be okay, right? Of just wanting to be loved and accepted and belong, as you said, and okay. And Brene Brown talks about belonging in such a profound way. I'm going to butcher this, but she talks about the difference between fitting in and belonging. Fitting in, you have to check your own values at the door. Literally to fit in. But to belong is to be completely yourself and then the world comes to you your people, your tribe comes to [00:52:00] you.
Belonging is actually an effortless stance that we take in the world. Fitting in is, you're trying really hard. I've lived it. I know it intimately. I could write a book on it. I'm sure you could too. Yes. And right. So belonging is. I think that's why this this newest leg of this journey for me has been it's been such a double edged sword.
It's been both so miraculous and it's also been really hard because I've had people close in my life that has just looked at me like, you're what? You're going to what? You're going to get baptized? Seriously? And it's you're Yeah, I am. And it wasn't even really my choice.
However, now that I, it wasn't, right? Because now, of course, that I'm walking down into this pathway. I know it's right. [00:53:00] And it's so interesting. I was out for lunch with two of my girlfriends yesterday. And they were asking me about this and my one friend said to me, she said you look like you're newly in love or something.
And I said, it's what I feel like. I said, I feel like I've got a new boyfriend that I'm like completely in love with or something. It's just right. It's just so funny that the last place you might think to look is the place that may be the homecoming that you've been looking for, right? And I think about that word a lot lately, Erin.
I think about the word home in relation to belonging. And I think it would be such a worthwhile endeavor for all of us, no matter whether we're sick or not, because I think we all struggle with this. I think this is just woven into the human condition. That we're all [00:54:00] looking for home, right? Some of us are very lucky to live in, safe, lovely homes with safe, lovely people.
And I know a lot of people aren't also, but I think there's something deeper than what we can have here on a physical material level that we're all looking for, right? That, that just little thread of unease or longing that moves through every single one of us, no matter what the circumstances are, right?
It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire. It doesn't matter if you've got perfect health. It doesn't matter. There's that longing that all of us, it's just, it never goes away, right? So what is that? I, I think about that more and more because I'll have moments now, whether I'm at church, or I'm praying, [00:55:00] or I'm just driving my car, where those polarities meet now, because something's taking shape within, again, this body mind that is so new, that is so ancient, right? It's new. It's ancient. It's always been here, but forgotten. Just forgotten. And I think we're all looking for that. How we find it may look different. Very, probably will look very different to each individual.
I just know for me, something is working here that I just would not have ever have anticipated.
Dr. Erin Hayford: And it's that same energy of what we were saying between control and surrender of when we like belonging versus fitting in, I feel like fits into that too, right? If we're trying to fit in controlling energy, like trying to force it to [00:56:00] happen or, whatever that is.
And then belonging is more of a surrender, and I think first of all, it's comforting to hear you say that because I feel like my homeless, my sense of homelessness has become, it's gotten louder and louder as I literally moved away from my, where I'm from. And so there's, that sense has been pervasive for me. I think there's always been that feeling of not quite fitting in and belonging in that way. Like we've been talking about. And then like physically not knowing where to root in and I think what you're what I'm coming to and what you're speaking to is it's much greater than that, right?
It's not, it can be a, certainly a place can be home and certainly the community can be home, but it's a greater sense of belonging that I think we used to have and have lost because of our disconnect from everything, right? From just the way the world moves in our connection to plants and earth, and, look around, it's obvious we've disconnected from humanity, right? We abuse and harm everything around us from the earth to people to beyond. But so I think there's that deeper sense of disconnect [00:57:00] that, until we really root into that reality of we belong here. We are all connected and we all are part of this bigger picture.
We're going to continue to have that pervasive emptiness. And this is just me working that out loud for the first time but I think it's very true. And part of what I've been coming to in my own work is this deep feeling of: it starts with connecting back to yourself. You are the vessel that is connected to, above the divine and also below the earth. You're that conduit, that connects both. And if you're not connected to yourself, then yeah, you are disconnected, just inherently disconnected because you're not, you're not part of that bigger connection to everything. And so for myself, and I wonder if it's true for you too, a lot of my journey is becoming a kind of, you've already said it, you just are doing it because it's, that's the message, or that's where you're being drawn to, or that's the intuition. The more you tune into your own journey and those messages and those intuitive pulls you're getting, the more you feel [00:58:00] on track and connected. It might cause people external to you to become disconnected or confused or whatever, but that's kind of part of that process of tuning back into yourself.
And I think that's where I'm at in my own work of, if I just came back into myself and just you know, acted as, as naturally and as intuitively, if I just let it come forward, whatever's in there, just let it out. And without people pleasing and being worried about how people are going to receive it or what's going to happen, what happens, I've never fully gotten there yet in my life.
It's like this, maybe ironic thing of turning in order to connect to everything, it's like we have to connect to the inside to connect to everything. Does that resonate? And it sounds like you're already doing that, you're connecting more and more to you to connect to everything else.
Ann Jarvis: Yes. Yes. I know exactly what you're saying. So I'll give you, I'll give you an example that was that I so noted it in the moment. And actually, so I was with these same two really good friends of mine. It was last summer.
We were, my one friend had rented a [00:59:00] cottage. We came up to the cottage just for an overnighter, just to hang out. And one of my friends was sharing with us just a story about her own family and she was crying and my other friend just grabbed her. ankle and just held on to her.
And I was watching this and I was like, I should really be grabbing her ankle too. I should be putting my hand on her. Like, why am I not reaching out? Why why am I not doing this? This is, and I was just, this whole inner dialogue sprang up. And then I was, I just sat there for a minute and I thought because that's just not who I am.
I'm very touchy feely with my own family, like with my husband and my daughter, but I'm not otherwise a huge touchy feely person, but I'm also a huge people pleaser. And so I get, I'll get in certain situations and I'll [01:00:00] think, why am I not doing this? And. In that moment I thought, because that's just not, it wouldn't be authentic.
And so I told them this. I said, I just had this I was watching, here you are crying, and then our other friend was, in her way. And she, our other friend is really, she's a very touchy, warm person. But that's authentic to her. So it's like little things like that. Okay, so don't, so then don't be touchy feely with people, right? I'm not a huge crier. I will I cry on my own. I don't have a problem with it. I don't hold myself back, but with other people, I'm not a huge crier. And I was really hard on myself for that for years. And then finally it's just been okay. Okay. So that is what it is. Okay. It's okay, right?
So it's, yeah, I think that sense of belonging has to be ignited within [01:01:00] yourself first. And getting to know this blueprint your signature, your, what I would call your, your divine signature or your pattern, whatever that is, that's, of course, always shifting, always evolving because nothing is static, right?
Everything is shifting and evolving. But, we can't get to S, before we get to A, B, C we have to get really okay with what's here and I think part of having a faith that something bigger than us knows what it's doing with us, is to look at what is here now. And to be totally okay with it. If you need to like I'm a huge introvert, every once in a while I will cancel my plans with friends. And feel less and less guilty about [01:02:00] it all the time, right? The people pleaser in me is like, Oh, I should really, I really, I should, but no I know that if I don't cancel my plans, when my body is telling me it wants to be quiet and rest then I set up all kinds of resistance inside.
I then get resentful of myself. Sometimes I get resentful of them, which is like. They're not doing anything wrong. They just want to set up a visit, right? So it, a whole interplay rolls out from not being true to yourself, from not sitting in belonging with yourself. And for some of us, the porous nature of our bodies, sets up disease within the body when we're, again, I say we're so lucky.
I know, lucky, unlucky, right? We're so lucky in that I say this to my sister all the time. My body tells me immediately when I'm off course, it's [01:03:00] immediate. I'll get a headache, or my joints will get sore, or I'll get like just completely exhausted. But something will tell me when I'm not being honest.
Really, when I'm not being honest. And getting okay with the discomfort of disappointing people, of saying no to people, of not being the person I think people think they need me to be for them. Because the whole thing is so exhausting, right? That whole dynamic is so exhausting. And, yes, as you mentioned, knowing that there's a higher point of belonging that, when I had that, when I had that mystical experience where I took Jesus down off the cross, it, it was so obvious in the moment [01:04:00] that nothing is wrong here.
I didn't need to do or be anything, literally nothing. It was like I love you no matter what. It no, it's even more than that. You're just, you are just love, right? You're just love. You couldn't make a mistake if you tried. You couldn't do it wrong if you tried. So yeah, that, that whole relationship of belonging is it's huge.
I think it's, I think it's a journey every single one of us will have to take, particularly for those of us who fight our own bodies.
Dr. Erin Hayford: Yeah. Yeah. And I totally I totally understand what you're saying about that lucky, unlucky. And I think that is a hard pill to swallow for some folks who haven't gotten glimpses of what we're talking about, but I think people who have understand that it is, [01:05:00] it's a weird blessing in disguise, right? Because ultimately these diseases, these conditions, these things that are getting our attention, they ultimately bring us deeper into relationship with ourselves and have, they give us a richer just more beautiful lived experience than we would have otherwise. Who knows where I would be, I might be behind a desk nine to five, if I never got sick, and wouldn't figure it out until I was 60 that I wanted to do this kind of work, who knows, but this, the point is that it's speeding up the timeline, like what you're saying, right? It forces us to get there faster. There's more of an urgency for us to get to who we are so that we can give that to ourselves first and foremost. And then whatever, however, that trickles out into the world, there's a gift or there's a reason, or there's a purpose to get back to yourself because the world needs you to come alive and to come out from behind all of the structures and all of the stories and all of the things that you're doing to like, dam yourself in place, not let it out.
So it's a, it's an invitation to release. So I love that analogy. And you said it [01:06:00] perfectly. The body is mimicking your deeply held beliefs, right? So whatever those are manifesting in your body. And it's just, again, it's just that matter of listening and surrendering and seeing what happens next.
So this has just been such a beautiful conversation. And I appreciate you so much. Thank you for, from one vulnerable people pleaser to another or anti vulnerable people pleaser to another, I appreciate you coming on here and sharing your story and for being vulnerable and for being just true to yourself and continuing to lean in.
And I think you are a very beautiful example of what happens when we do lean in and listen look at this amazing human that you are and what you're bringing to the world. And like I said, just listening to you talk, like I feel at peace in my own body, just hanging out with you through zoom.
So I just, I truly appreciate you. And sharing this all with us and for, the medicine that will continue to ripple out from here for people who listen in now or later or whenever. Thank you so much for being here and maybe again, we'll have another conversation, but until [01:07:00] next time.
Thank you so much, Erin. It was such a pleasure to talk to you.
Anne, if people want to get in touch with you, will you tell us a little bit about the work that you do? And I'll put all links down in the show notes for folks who want to find you, but what services do you offer and how can people get in touch with you?
Ann Jarvis: Yeah I call myself an intuitive energy healer.
That just means that I'm able to see patterns in, in people and often physical things. I'm usually just I can see physical things that's held by emotion in people. So I primarily work over zoom. And sessions are usually an hour between an hour and a half. And you can book them on my website if you're interested.
Dr. Erin Hayford: All right. So that link is down below and I will also link the PubMed article just for folks who are interested in reading that as well. Yes. Awesome. Thank you so much.
