Project Description
Lindsay, BC, Canada
“I was truly able to understand the why, to give myself grace and compassion and understand that those were survival mechanisms that I learned. And that there is hope and faith, and you don’t need to be in survival mode. You can take all of the tools and techniques here and implement them in your life to move forward. And this program has changed my life. I don’t have the words to express how much it’s changed my life… This experience at Fresh Start has completely turned me in a complete 180 .”
Improvements with: Anger, Breathing/ Lung Issues, Bursitis, Childhood Trauma, Depression, Emotional Trauma, Frozen Shoulder, Grief, Headaches/ Migraines, Inflammation, Insomnia/ Sleep Issues, Life Goals/ Sense of Purpose, Low Energy/ Chronic Fatigue, Low Immunity, Muscle and Joint Issues, Nausea, Neuropathy, Post-Accident/ Fall Recovery, Plugged Ear, Self-Identity Redefining, Self Love and Love for Others, Stomach Pain.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Desperation: I truly felt I was in a life-or-death situation. I was basically living in survival mode. I fell really hard and had to have surgery. I’ve gone to counselling, but never saw the amount of progress that I expected to see. | I truly learned the why. Why was I stressed out? Why was I a workaholic? Why was I snapping at people? Why did I have such short patience and a temper? Why did I not truly feel happy? And I was truly able to understand the why, to give myself grace and compassion and understand that those were survival mechanisms. And that there is hope and faith. |
| Childhood Trauma/ PTSD: I have gone through a lot of traumatic experiences in my life, have gone to counselling and attempted to get help. It was a band-aid I had put on. My parents divorced when I was at a young age. I got into relationships that were extremely unhealthy, with people who had drug addictions and alcoholism. | I've been able to work through my past trauma allowed me to do a lot of different releases while I was here. |
| Grief and Anger: My dad, passed away in September of 2018, and in my life, my dad was, the person who always, no matter what, showed up for me. I thought that I had grieved for him, but there was always, I never really truly got there. I really never truly felt the weight was lifted. | At Fresh Start, I understood that I have a lot of traits that I got from my father. And not all of those traits were good traits, and a lot of them were really unhealthy coping mechanisms. But I learned them ever since I was little. So during one of my counseling sessions, she said to me: You are allowed to be mad. You are allowed to be angry, and you are allowed to feel hateful. And in that moment, something came over me and I went back to being how I could be when people pushed my buttons. And I would go from zero to a hundred very quickly. And I literally sat across the table from her and I yelled and talked loud, and I swore like he was there, but he wasn't. And when I was done, I took a breath and said, wow, I feel better. I felt really great. After it, I felt like there was a release… Then I decided to write a letter to my dad. I felt a lot of emotion while I was writing it, but when I was done, I was done. Whereas any other time I had written letters, there was still a lot of feeling afterwards. And this letter was very different… I felt like he was giving me permission to hold him accountable and be angry so that I could continue my healing journey. |
| Chronic Pain: I do not know what it’s like to not live with chronic pain. Since 15 yr., I have scoliosis, a 39-to-43-degree curve in my spine that goes out on the right side and hits my shoulder blade. I was told that if I picked a career where I was either sitting down all of the time or standing up all the time, I would probably be crippled by the time I was 40 and not be able to walk or move… Throughout my life I’ve been in 9 car accidents of varying degrees. I had severe whiplash, chronic headache pain due to my neck and back issues. I have lived a life of inflammation…. I ended with bursitis in my shoulder and chronic shoulder pain. | On a scale of one to ten, I’m feeling 20 times better than I was when I got here. … To none of the physical symptoms that I had when I came into here, I have had to give any conscious thought to in my journey here… I don't feel the stress and the tension that I had. I'm not saying I don't have days where my body doesn't feel as great as it does on other days where it's feeling really good. |
| There was always something going on my knee, shoulder, back, neck, headaches, my stomach. I would say before I came to Fresh Start, my pain level was probably 15 out of 10. | On most days, my pain level is a two or three right now, that’s after 10+ days of being on this program. So I can’t imagine what I’m gonna be able to do when I continue to look at and analyse what’s working for me, because I’m gonna take the foundations I learned in this program and build upon them. I do have faith and hope, and I know that I’m gonna be able to get myself to a zero. |
| Breast Cyst, Kidney Stone and Gall Bladder Stone. Two years ago, I ended up having a mammogram where they found a cyst in my right breast. I ended up really sick one day at work and drove myself to the hospital. It turned out I had a kidney stone in my right kidney an a 2-cm stone stuck in my gallbladder that was blocking the duct. It took 1.5 yrs. Of testing and finally surgery. My physical health completely declined. There was nothing I could eat that would not be a trigger. | I have not taken any Tylenol since I’ve been here. |
| Stomach Pain: (due to the Gallbladder Surgery 6 weeks prior to coming into the program). Doctors and specialists said they did not know why I had it. | I still have some post-surgery pain, as it was only six weeks ago that I had surgery… But I have noticed a major change. One of the yoga instructors asked me whether I still have this pain, but it was almost like that void talking to me, reminding me that it’s gone and the pains that I’m feeling are more of healing pains. They are not pains of anguish or intensity like it was before. So it’s definitely changing/ |
| Adreneal Fatigue: I am a workaholic. My whole life. I lived up here on this high, and I truly believe that if I hadn’t had the tap on the shoulder I got, which was me having surgery and not being able to work, if that had not happened, I probably would have ended up dying within the next year or two. I was completely stressed and burnt out. My adrenal numbers on Organ Screen were at 32. | Within 12 days, all the numbers exceeded 55. I am physically feeling amazing. My energy is back. I feel fantastic. |
| Immune System: On my initial Live Blood Analysis, I had 1 White Blood Cell at 10 times magnification (per screen), and normal is 10-15…. I was constantly sick this past winter. I was sick from the beginning of October until the middle of March. I would get a cold. I would get over it, and the next day I would get kicked down with something else. My immune system was so damaged that I don’t even know it I would call it survival mode, but that was the lowest of the low survival mode…. | When I retook my blood test 12 days later, my white blood cell count was 19…. |
| Plugged Right Ear: In 2016 I was at work and somebody came into work with a really bad cold. It was a head cold. I ended up getting it, and I was literally sick for almost a full year. I could not get rid of it. It didn’t’ matter what I took or what I did, and all of a sudden one day it went away. But what I was left with was a plugged right ear. I ended up getting hearing tests and being sent to a specialist. They told me they don’t really know what’s going on and offered to do a surgery to look and see…. For many years I had to open and move my jaw to have that go away…. That's literally what I lived with for years. It didn't matter what I did, I couldn't unplug it. If I did that, it would unplug for a few minutes, maybe half an hour, and it would come back again. And it was literally at one point I said to my doctor, if you don't do something, I will go insane. | This is healing. I don’t feel it at all. It’s weird. |
| Breathing: this winter, I was sick for four and a half months about, and I was on inhalers. I was on a steroid inhaler. I was on an asthma inhaler. I don't have asthma. I've never had lung issues before. But I just was not able to recover from the colds that I was getting, and that's what they were giving me to help my lungs. I stopped using those shortly before I came into fresh start. | I have noticed a major change in my lungs and the way that my body and my diaphragm and my internal organs move in terms of how I'm able to take that deep breath in, truly allow that oxygen exchange between my cells and then release. And that's something I've never had in my life before. |
| Chronic Headaches and Neck pain: Before I came to FS, I had chronic headaches. I had neck pain, was going to a chiropractor once a week. Sometimes more, if I turned my neck the wrong way and it went out. | I have not had a headache since being here. My body feels great…. I feel that a combination oteh treatments, allowing my body to release, to understand, to let go of the coping mechanisms that I had. |
| Bursitis in Shoulder. Limited range of movement, a ton of pain, especially if I moved in the wrong way. It was really affecting the exercise. I ended up not being able to go to yoga. I was not able to support my body weight. I do not know what it’s like not to have pain in my shoulder. Within the last year and a half, I ended up doing some nerve blocking with a specialist, which helped a little bit, but it didn’t take it away completely. … I was taking Tylenol as much as I could or just powering through it and not doing anything. | Shoulder feels so much better. |
| Hips: have been our almost my whole life. My one leg is a little bit longer than the other due to scoliosis. | My hips are still a little bit out of alignment. But I don’t have the pain in my hips that I used to have. It gets triggered once and a while by certain things I’ll do or move, but overall, that pain has subsided so much that it’s not something I focus on anymore. It’s something that I’m able to notice when it’s happening now, as opposed to having to try to just live with it all the time. |
| Knee Pain:I tore my ACL during the motor vehicle accident. I’m still waiting for an MRI, 3 yrs later. Prior to coming to Fresh Start, I had to use infrared and heat to be able to exercise, because without it I wasn’t able to. | Coming to Fresh Start and working with the practitioners, I’m able to attend a regular yoga session for an hour. I don’t have the clicking and the creaking. I don’t have the pain that I would feel when I would go and do a squat. I 'm actually able to do squats without pain in my knee. |
| Wrists: When I was 20, I fell at work when I was a traffic control person. I tripped and landed right on my elbow and ended up leaving, going to the hospital, and they did a bunch of tests and determined that I had carpal tunnel in both of my wrists. So I ended up changing career… After my motor accidents, I have developed Raynaud's disease in my hands and feet. Certain parts of my fingers went completely white, as well as my feet, and they got really, really cold, and I’d have to warm them up or put them under water. The last 3 years I’ve slept under a heating blanket and took my rice bag to bed, because my feet and hands got so cold that they would prevent me from going to sleep. They said that it was damage to my soft tissue due to a car accident, but nothing was broken. I really struggled with my wrist at work. I had to move it a lot. I have nerve damage and pain in my arm and my muscles. If I hold something in one place for too long or if I’m carrying something, there's no coming back from it. I get these shooting pains , and it feels like someone stabbing me with a knife, and it’s really intense. | Since I’ve been at Fresh Start, I have not put my rice bag in the microwave once. It has not been noticeable that my hands or feet got cold… Since I’ve been at Fresh Start until talking about it now and reflecting on it, and yesterday just having that pain because I was carrying something I shouldn’t have, I haven’t even thought about my wrists or really felt any pain. |
| Sleep Issues: After surgery, I was sleeping a lot, going to bed late and sleeping till whenever I wanted, 11:30 a.m. or so… before I came to Fresh Start, I was using quite a large amount of CBD and THC in order to shut my mind off to fall asleep. I had a really bad sleeping pattern. I would go to sleep whenever I could, to finally shut my brain off, and before I fell asleep , I would quickly look at my calendar and figure out how late I could set my alarm to still get up and either be at work or do whatever I needed to do. And sometimes I fell asleep at 2:30 am and had to be up at 7 a.m. for work. It was really taxing on me. I had to medicate to sleep…. It was a really bad sleep pattern…. I didn’t have anything to wake up for. | I brought with me some sleep aides, but I said I’m not going to use them. My sleep has improved in the sense that I haven’t’ had to take anything in order to fall asleep and I’ve actually been able to fall asleep a little bit sooner. |
| Big Life Decisions: I had three really, really big decisions that were weighing on me. I just felt so stuck. I was beating myself up over how I couldn't figure these things out and they all were related to each other. And one of them was spousal relationships. Another one of them was having children and the other one was career and life and what that looked like. | I was able to gain so much mental clarity through the whole program, through the counseling, through the relaxation sessions, through the practitioners, through talking and healing with the people that were here in my program with me through their lived experiences. I was able to take all of that information and leaving here, I can honestly say that I have a hundred percent clarity on my path in life moving forward. I know exactly what I need to go and do to continue healing, and I'm at a point where I'm just ready to go home and put everything I've learned into practice and action and make changes in my life and take accountability for my part in those relationships and the things that have happened. |
Experience Highlights:
- All of the classes, all of the practitioners… when you are for a massage, you’re not just getting a massage. The practitioner’s talking to you, they’re understanding. And that was really impactful for me.
The information above is based on the following resources:
- Unedited Video Testimonial Materials
- Before and After Self-Assessment
- Program Participation and Progress Sheet
- Before and After Emotional Wellness Tests
Disclaimer : Results of participants differ and the Fresh Start cannot guarantee that you will experience your improvements in the same way as in this testimonial. The Fresh Start is not an allopathic medical facility and does not claim to either diagnose or treat any disease. The Fresh Start does not guarantee a recovery from any specific disease or a health symptom.
