Medication to Meditation - Avital Miller

I listed out all of the ways that people found success towards healing in the book. And then I matched that to what did I do as a program manager at Microsoft? What did I do as an entrepreneur? What do I do in my relationships? What do I do to be happy? And it's the same success strategies all around. And that's where this gets to be fun when they say how you do one thing is how you do everything.

What's up, Fitness fans? Welcome back to the Future Fitness podcast and interview series. This is your host, Eric Malzone. And step in number 59, I talked to Abital Miller. So we are both uh spent a lot of time in Santa Barbara in our lives. And her story is interesting. So she has a book coming out. Uh should be out by the time of this release. It's called Healing Happens. Stories of Healing Against All Odds. So her story, she got diagnosed with Hoshimoto's disease. And uh, you know, she's gone through the atypical Western medicine route, and then she started searching for things outside of that. Uh her journey has brought her to India, uh, where she met some healers uh and all kinds of people all over the world, healers from all over the world, and she's gathered all these stories of really, like the book says, healing against all odds. So uh it's a great story. Uh before we get into it, I just ask you to take one minute of your day and do me a huge favor. Ready? Go to iTunes, find the Future of Fitness podcast, give us a favorable rating. That would be fantastic. We're really got like 10 right now, and I can really use your support because we put a lot of work into this, and I hope you like it. Um, once you're done with that, go straight over to YouTube and go to the Fitness Marketing Alliance uh YouTube channel and look for the future of fitness and subscribe there. That's it. Under a minute, guarantee it. If you can't do it in a minute, then you gotta work on your fitness. So without further ado, this is Avital Miller. I hope you enjoy it. It's a great story. Uh off we go. Hey fitness friends, welcome back to the Future of Fitness podcast interview series. This is Eric, and today I am with Avital Miller. Welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. It's so exciting to be here amongst all the wonderful fitness professionals.

Yeah, I'm excited. I'm I've, you know, you and I have talked uh quite a bit before the recording, and uh your story is a good one. And uh so why don't let's dive right into that. Tell everybody your story, some of your background, and then we'll we'll get into what you're up to nowadays.

Yeah, well, I'd love sharing my story because a lot of people ask me what a former program manager at Microsoft is doing involved with healing. And the truth is that Microsoft didn't feel like my passion, and I became a fitness professional. Some of you fitness professionals might relate, you might have had another career before being involved with fitness. But I grew up as a gymnast and dancer, it was a very natural thing for me to go into, and I very quickly became a teacher trainer, a fitness director. I had my own business leading outdoor yoga and hiking trips, and I was teaching 25 to 30 classes a week all over town. So I started to get nicknamed the Energizer Bunny. But Energizer Bunny didn't last, and this was the huge devastation to me because even as a kid in preschool, I didn't nap, I just patiently waited on the cot until nap time was over. But there I am taking my first nap. And I know that sounds silly to a lot of people, a lot of people nap, but it wasn't just a nap, it was your body weighing like a ton of bricks. And when I would fall asleep, it could be easily for an hour or two, and it would be really, really hard to pull myself out of that. And then my beautiful long hair was falling out. My muscles were turning to fat. And this is where it gets interesting. You know, we get lucky oftentimes as teachers, depending on what you're teaching, you don't have to do things as long as the students. So none of them needed to know that I was becoming weaker than them. But you can imagine, as fitness professionals, if you started to get weaker than your students or your clients, you would get a little concerned about the future of your career and what's going on with your body. I did what many of us would do. I went to the doctor and got a diagnosis. Diagnosis was Hashimoto's, an autoimmune disorder that has to do with the thyroid gland. So there's also hypothyroidism and a few other diagnoses in the mix there. And then they gave me a huge dosage of medication, a handful of supplements, they sent me out the door saying that's it for life. This is a lifelong thing, and there's nothing you can do about it. Just take this medicine. At the time, I believed the doctors. What else was I to know? You know, that that has to be my life. But I thought, if this is my life, I'm going to do my best with it. And I started reading online and reading books. I started going to all different types of medical practitioners. I even went to India and studied one-on-one with an Ayurvedic doctor for two months. I learned so much as fitness professionals. Like, we think we're really healthy, we think we know a lot. Lo and behold, there was more for me to learn. And there were a lot of things that are told to us in society. Like, remember the old food pyramid? And we started to outdate that, but there's a lot of things that we get taught in general public that we think we should just trust. But sometimes we need to do a little more research and dig a little deeper to understand these things. And that was one of my first just eye-openers. Like, oh my gosh, there's all these chemicals in my home and that I'm putting in my body that are not good for me. And I just changed a lot in my health as soon as I started making those changes, and I got rid of things that I was allergic to, and I watched out from over-exercising. That's very easy for fitness professionals to do, and making sure that I'm getting sleep at the right time at nights. Those are some of the physical things that I was doing. But then I would just look at what's going on with myself when my energy is high, when my energy is low. And I noticed in one book it talked about with certain diseases, there are certain mindsets or emotions or types of relationships that are common for people with those issues. This is all very interesting. So I just went and made adjustments on all of those layers, and that really helped study me, but I was still on medication. Now, this is when it gets interesting because I moved into a yoga community and started meditating regularly. A couple months in, you'd think I'm feeling amazing. I felt awful. So I went to the doctor. The doctor's like, well, the reason you feel awful is because you're overdosed on your medication. They lowered my medication. And I leveled out, and then a couple of months later again, not feeling well, back to the doctor. Run the tests. Yeah, you're overdosed on your medication again. Lower than medication. This actually went on for four years. So it wasn't a quick, like overnight, oh, you know, you're off medication. Um, and I'll be honest too, I was off medication for four years as well. And then about a year ago, I had a virus, and so that in impacted my system overall. And they put me on thyroid medication. And I was a little nervous about it, but I could, you know, feel that my body needed that support. And I had to learn even just to accept, you know, what's going on with the body and how do we work with ourselves and to know that happiness is really the biggest key and to figure out what's the right balance, but not to look up or down at any type of medical system that's out there. And this may sound a little woo-woo to some people, but because I'm coming out quite a bit more as a professional speaker than I was before, of course, teaching that many classes a week or speaking a lot, but now it's a little more sincere because I'm sharing my own story. And I went to this medical intuitive, and she said, actually, you need the thyroid medicine right now just because you're communicating more. Thyroid is in the throat, and if you believe in the yoga stuff, that's the throat chakra, that's an energy center of communication. So this is also just a boost to help me communicate better. But when I did my recent test with the doctor, everything is very, very level and it's becoming more and more even keel. Um, so I I hate to be devastating and say, oh, I'm off medication for life. Um, did it end up being for life for me, and I'm not on as much medication as before, and I might not be on the medication permanently. But in the meantime, of all this happening, I ran into more extreme stories than mine of people who have had changes that they've seen for over 10 or 15 years. And these were people who were told they're gonna die in a few months or even a few hours. But yet it's years later that I'm meeting them and they're fully healthy. So that you know, that put that question to my head. Well, what are all those people doing? I know what I did. I looked at this, all these different layers of healing. What are those people doing? So I started interviewing them, and those interviews are going into my book, which will probably already be released by the time this podcast gets released. So the publication date is April 3. It's a very exciting project for me. And don't forget, writing is also about communication. So extra support for the thyroid there for sharing these stories. The book is called Healing Happens: Stories of Healing Against All Odds. Now, this is what I did after I wrote the book. I listed out all of the ways that people found success towards healing in the book, and then I match that to what did I do as a program manager at Microsoft? What did I do as an entrepreneur? What do I do in my relationships? What do I do to be happy? And it's the same success strategies all around. And that's where this gets to be fun when they say how you do one thing is how you do everything. Here's another example of that.

Awesome. So through all of your travels and looking for answers, what was there a particular um you know, uh style of medicine or anything that was even more impactful than the others?

Well, this is funny. I'd actually like to say um the style of medicine is no medicine, um, no natural healing technique, no eastern medicine, because the most important thing is to have happiness and livelihood. And when I pull out the four key success strategies from the book, the number one is reason to live. Um, and a lot of people know this who've had health issues, that it could very easily become their life, and it can be a full-time job taking care of all the medical stuff that needs to be done, especially with the more serious issues. And and then you don't have a life anymore. And there's this reminder or reason to live, so that we actually can, you know, we don't just do all these medical things to live, but we actually remember why we want to live and we take advantage of that. But interestingly, the thing that healed people, some of them the most, was when they had a reason to live. I interviewed Dr. Bernie Siegel, who's fairly well known for just treating thousands and thousands of patients, and he realized very early on that people were healing in ways it wasn't expected. There was a protocol for healing for cancer called EPO, EPOH, and the doctor who was treating people with that reversed the letters and made it hope. So when he said to his patients, this is the hope protocol, all of a sudden more people were healing.

Sure, sure.

And then there's there's all these cute stories that Dr. Bernie Siegel found, like people who um like like a woman was waiting for her kids to grow up, and as soon as the last one was out of the home, you know, then she passed away. She should have died like 15 years earlier than that. And then there was a person whose husband really relied on her to take care of things, and they finally just came to this agreement that because she she was ready to die, but he wasn't letting go. They came to this agreement, okay, she's gonna teach him how to do everything. And then he came at a certain point, he said, All right, like I I know it all. I I don't want to, you know, hang on to you. If you're ready to go, you can go. And then that's it. She's like, All right, well, the kids are coming tomorrow, so I'll I'll wait a couple days and then I'll die.

Yeah.

So I'm curious. There's you know, a lot of people I'm sure are feel like they have a book inside of them, right? Uh talk talk to us about that process. What what prompted you to write the book? Did you have have did you have mentors who urged you to do it? Or how did you come up with the topic? Uh yeah, give give us insight into that process.

Yeah, this is a really fun process, and I can address a couple things of what built into me doing a book and this specific book. Believe it or not, I started when I was about five years old telling my mother that I wanted to write an autobiography. Um little did I know that I would have an interesting life or anything to share, so of course I had to live life first. But I started to go to all of these personal development training programs, and they're always promoting writing a book because today books are often like business cards. They're a huge way to get your message out and to build credibility. So anybody who's an entrepreneur in business is if you're going to any business development programs, you probably are already getting encouraged to write a book. But they'd always have us raise your hand if you've been wanting to write a book for a year. I'd raise my hand, five years, my hand's still up, ten years, you know, 15, 20, 35, and they look at me and they go, Well, how old are you? Because my hand's still up. So it's it's been a lifelong dream to write a book. And the other thing that happened was when I was living at this yoga community, I was the sales and marketing director at the book publishing company. So there I am now surrounded in books, but I'm sharing somebody else's message. And once I started having my own messages, I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't just share somebody else's books. But here I was imbibed with the energy of books and starting to know how to put out books myself because there I am in the office doing it, and it's a small company, so I got to see things happening in other areas. Um that's the next thing that happens is I I just the passion for writing is getting stronger. And I started a blog during that time and just loved sharing messages. And I'm gonna say this too, for people who feel like maybe I can't do it, or maybe it's not for me. Because when I was, believe it or not, in kindergarten going into first grade, my mother felt like I should be held back in school because she already had two kids before me who were very smart and realized that I wasn't putting letters together as well as they did, and I must have had a learning disability. And I went through all this testing and they said, you know what, we feel like she's fine to go into first grade, but she needs a tutor. So the first three years of elementary school, I had to be taken out of class to have a special tutor on writing in English. When they gave us the equivalency exams on math and then English and grammar, math, I got 99%. That was as high as you could get. The English and grammar, 55%. Ouch. Huge difference there. Yeah, so I didn't feel qualified to be a writer. And this is what it makes me a little sad to think about this because my mother passed away five years now ago. And even though she felt like I had this learning disability, when I told her I wanted to write a book, and I started telling her more and more as I got older, and she'd always say, just write a little each day, just write a little each day. She kept encouraging me, even if the skills weren't there, and that's important for any of us with any dreams that we have. If you feel the passion inside of you, don't let that stop you because maybe you're not that great at it. There's so many, you know, there's an editor for books. My editor is amazing. I don't have to be a perfect writer, I just have to know what messages I'm getting out there, and somebody else can refine the actual words on the page so that it's readable for other people. And that's where the fun of bringing a team together is. The last thing is, how did I decide this book? This is a fun technique for those of you in business. I had about 10 different book ideas by the time I'm ready to start writing. But I listed them out, but then I went into strategy, not into you know, passionately. What am I most passionate about putting out right now? Strategy. I mean, healing became the thing that I'm most passionate about putting out right now because I'd already been meeting a lot of healing programs. And people seem to be so fascinated when I tell them all the different stories of my life. They always stopped me at the healing. They're like, what? You healed yourself? So that's part of it. And then how do we put something out where we're going to get more leverage and more visibility? If I were to write my autobiography by itself from the beginning, I'm a no-name. And my autobiography, it'll be fun, but it's not that extreme of stories where it's going to get its own publicity by being a no-name and putting that out there. So that's not the best place to start. But here I am wanting to put a book out of stories from other health and healing experts who each have their own networks. So bam, now we're doing something from the start that's going to get me more visibility. And it's not just visibility. What I've learned is that I have a huge team from the start of launching my work and launching my business because I've made wonderful connections with many of the people who I interviewed in the book. And there's been a huge support system and a lot of opportunities that were all opening for each other.

Yeah, that's great. And I think the interview model is a really good way for a lot of people to get started, you know, having having collaborators. Uh you know, and this is totally selfish because I've always thought about, you know, I want to write a book. I just don't know what I want to write it on. But I know there's you know general topics, and I just know I want to do it. And uh so let's talk about the book.

Uh I do want to give you a warning though, because some people think doing interviews and then planting that in the book is faster or easier. Um my editor said it's longer. And I know it took me a long time, a long, long time to comb through all of those interviews and edit it. And it's not really fun to do that editing process for so long. It was way more fun when I actually created my own writing and my own story and the intros and conclusions to each of the interviews. So just keep that in mind. It's not as much easier to put other people's content into your book.

Okay, good advice. So please tell us about the book. What's the uh I know there's um we talked about kind of the four the four pillars or the four keys. Give us some insight into uh what it's all about.

Yeah, yeah. So this book I mentioned, Healing Happens, Stories of Healing Against All Odds. It includes my story of healing, and then interviews with 17 other health and healing experts. They are Western and Eastern medicine, and even non-medicine, like healthy lifestyles coach. So there's all different types of disciplines. There's over 20 diseases covered in the book. And the main thing to keep in mind is that it's stories of inspiration, of overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges, and that each of the pieces of wisdom, the techniques that are offered, I feel can apply to all different types of health issues, but also in just having a healthy and happy lifestyle overall and a successful lifestyle. And then I mentioned that there's these success strategies that I've been pulling out that relate to other areas of life. And I always like to focus on four key ones when I talk about it. Um, they go really well together and they seem to be the most impactful. And I mentioned number one is reason to live. And I, you know, I'm an engineer also in the past. So when I think about the the stronger force, when two forces are bad than each other, the stronger force wins. So if the force for your reason to live is stronger than anything else, what's going to win? I would say that reason to live. Number two is don't listen to everything. And I mentioned that I learned a lot of things about health and our bodies and our environment and the products we use that I didn't know about. And also through my research, I have seen that there's studies showing, and it's actually even um what are they called? I'm forgetting the the official name of um people who die from taking medication and or from medical errors. And there's actually nearly 130,000 people a year who die from taking medication as prescribed. And then I'm mentioning my story and other stories of people healing beyond what the doctor said would be possible for them. I've run into this point nearly 200 stories like that. So that's huge. If your doctor gives you a diagnosis, it's good to follow that. It's still good to do what your doctor says, but when your doctor gives you a prognosis of something of how your life needs to be for the rest of your life, that's not necessarily true. Fatal pronouncements do not have to be your fate. So that's the fun of that. Maureen Bell, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, given six to eight weeks to live. And they said there's nothing we could do. We could do some chemo to prolong your life, but that's it. She literally went through a mindset shift. Her son came to visit and remember the single strong mom who raised him. So he just asked her, like, why didn't you fight? Because she was about to die at this point. 85 pounds, hospice, morphine tubes, oxygen passage patches, not eating, just completely in bed. Yeah, why didn't you fight? And just that word choice starts ringing in her ear. Do I have a choice? Do I have a choice? And literally from that moment, she started to heal. Shocked the doctors. They thought maybe they were giving her a placebo. And then the key, too, is to do what you can do. This is the key. I actually have these hand motions that go with each of these. So this one's a fun one where you roll your hands around and you shake your head. You do what you can do. Dr. Brick Goldner was diagnosed with lupus when she was a teenager. It was so severe that she was on chemo for two years as a teen, as a young teen. And that did help her. She had ups and downs throughout the year. She didn't expect to live a long life or anything. She was determined to be a doctor in the time that she had. And she so she imagined herself wearing a white coat but never a white dress. But guess what? She meets Thomas Tadlock. They fall in love fast. So fast that he asked her to marry her after a month, and she hadn't even mentioned the whole lupus thing. So she had to tell him. He only hesitated for a moment. He's like, you know, I'd rather have a short life with you than none at all. It's very touching, um, you know, to hear this. And she goes, Okay, let's get married. He's like, but if we're getting married, I want to look great for our wedding. And he happened to be a fitness professional. He does these amazing weight loss programs for MTV stars who need to get rid of that pooch in their belly real fast before their next MTV gig. And he puts her on his diet, but his diet included meat. She said, But I won't eat any meat, I'm a vegetarian. So he ended up with a vegan diet. And right before the wedding, she does her routine testing of lupus, and there's no lupus. I don't know why, but there's no lupus. Well, it's remained no lupus for 13 years at this point. Wow, wow, she didn't expect to have any kids. She's had two beautiful boys, no complications. She she's so cute. She lost, I think within nine days, she was back in her pre-pregnancy genes. So this diet helps people lose weight quickly. It helps the metabolism, it helps them heal. But they researched this diet on tons of other people and have been helping tons of other people, especially with autoimmune disorders. Now, some people who love their meat might be freaking out when I talk about this or other things in your diet. Because that's you know, that's what Brooke did was she became vegan. But there's a couple things to note. One is that she talks about this idea of crowding out, where you just fill your body with lots of great nutrients. And then if you have some of the other things you really, really like, that's okay. Just make sure you get the good stuff in there. But what she's doing is she's feeding the body with what we're made of. Some of you might have noticed my article in the fitness professional online called Big Picture Principle: Three-step system to simplify your client's diet plan. So, number one, what I'm talking about, what our bodies are mostly made of, is water. So we're gonna have things that are highly processed, that are dehydrated. We're getting further from what the body is actually made of. So part of the vegan diet is just eating more raw, more natural foods. It's easier for the body to process. But here's the thing: also, those of you that dread making any changes in your diet, we all need a different diet for our own selves. Number two, I use the word properitarian, and that literally means you know, eating right for your blood type, you could say. And I studied Ayurveda, and Chinese medicine does something similar where you look at what's somebody's energetic balance in terms of comparing to earth, air, water, fire, ether, and you know what balance worked for your natural state. And Maureen Bell, she did not heal by having a vegan diet, she used her intuition on what to eat. The fun thing is she actually had to encourage her appetite, so she'd watch cooking shows, and then her sister would just cook quickly whatever came up on the cooking show as soon as she got hungry. So she was also tuning in intuitively, and she was eating what was appealing to her according to a period and aroma, and that's number three in that three-step system for choosing the right diet. What's your personal preference? Because if you eat something because you're told it's healthy and you don't like it, that's toxic for your body. Remember, negative emotions create toxins in the body, so even just having a negative emotion while you eat something, that's toxic. But your body has a certain amount of intuition as to what is right for it.

Awesome. Um that's amazing. So you got the book, it's coming out in April. Uh, you also have some a lot of other things going on, too. You have um a conference coming up. Tell us about that.

Okay. Well, I've got a couple conferences coming up. One of them is my creation with a group of women. And some of you might have noticed there's so much more collaboration that happens today than used to be. And sometimes they come out of just a casual discussion of, hey, this sounds fun. Now we've got six amazing women, best-selling authors and TED Talk speakers, coming together for the Feminine Power Project. That is on May 12th in Denver. And we're creating the sense of balance for our overall lifestyle with an especial emphasis on health and wealth. A lot of the people speaking are involved with healing, like myself, and then also with business development. And it's healing for ourselves, as I mentioned, if we're really doing our reason to live and we're finding ways to be successful at it. So that's part of what we're gonna help people set people up for. The other program, I'm actually gonna be doing a lot of programs coming up, but the other program to note is Imagination IQ, which also happens in Denver. That's May 18 through 20. And the more I find out about this program, the more I find out that it's probably gonna be the most fun and creative way to develop your business that I've ever seen. And at this program, I'm not just speaking about these success strategies, but I am also performing in themed plays. And when I find out about these plays, that's when I got really excited about this experience because it is interactive. We're actually not allowed to let people sit for more than 30 minutes. So this is about experiential learning, gamification, how we're gonna retain information in the best possible way. So we have some really fun themes coming up from movies that you've heard of. Part of my homework is watching movies to get ready for this event. I am going to be leading yoga and meditation, and I might also be performing dance. A little surprise in there. We'll see if I can squeeze that in. Uh so that's called Imagination IQ. And I actually made a really easy URL to look that up. It's just healinghappens.biz B-I-Z.

Okay.

Um that takes you straight to my affiliate link. Um, so you can check that out. And you can connect with me directly and with Dan Fowler, the founder. He's known as the Imagination Engineer. I love following him on Facebook because he's always expanding and opening my mind beyond what many of his great gurus that I've been with and all these other mentors that I've seen. So he's a really, really fun person to have in my network. And just to rewind, for the Feminine Power Project, we did create femininepowerproject.com as the URL for that. So you're welcome to check that out. And I would love to have any of you as part of either of those experiences. At Imagination IQ, we're going to be doing a lot of networking and collaboration. So this is a great time to expand your network, but also to continue to cultivate your team. The speaker team has already shown me that there's a huge amount of collaboration and networking and support happening. We actually meet once a month as a group and then we meet individually a lot as well. Just no agenda, just to see how we can help each other. And we've been creating all these connections for each other. Uh both of those are really, really awesome opportunities. I would love for people to be involved with them.

Yeah. Where do people find?

Where do people find you? Me, okay. What I recommend, first of all, is that you go to healinghappensbook.com and you check out Healing Happens Stories of Healing Against All Odds. Um, I haven't actually finalized how I'm doing the new new web page, but I'll probably have a free gift on there for you of a chapter either in written or audio form, and then that will link you to where you can actually purchase the book. There's a lot of free resources that I have out there already, some blog posts and YouTube videos on healing happens. So that's a good way to start to share this information because the more that these stories of healing get out there, the more that people see the potential of overcoming challenges. I mean, 42% of people have either known somebody who's been given a fatal pronouncement or a permanent diagnosis, terminal diagnosis of something. That's a huge number of people in our networks who have known somebody who could use this information. That's very, very key. And of course, if you want to connect directly with me, you can always find a link from healinghappensbook.com. But I also have a website under my name, avvitalmiller.com. Avital is spelled A, B is in Victory, I T is in Talented, A L. I love using those letters because it always cracks people up on the phone when they ask me to spell my name.

That's good. Awesome. Well, these are great stories, and um yeah, I appreciate you you getting them out there. I think it's really important for people to start opening up their minds to uh different possibilities, different ways to heal. And really cool topics. So um yeah, thank you for coming on, and I'm sure um you know we we'll be hearing a lot more from you. I have a strong feeling.

So wonderful. I'd be happy to share, and thank you so so much for having me on here today, Eric.

You're very welcome. We'll talk soon.

All right.

Hey fitness fans, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I want to personally thank you for your support and listening to the Future of Fitness podcast and interview series. If you have a few minutes, I would greatly appreciate it if you went to iTunes and gave us a favorable rating. Uh as well as go to our YouTube channel and subscribe there. That'd be fantastic. If you know of anybody who'd be a great fit for the show, as a guest, please hit me up at Eric at fitnessmarketingalliance.com. That's Eric Will C. Also, I have three questions for you. Number one, are you a fitness professional who's been in the industry for over seven years? Question number two, do you have an online revenue stream or multiple online revenue streams? Question number three, are you ready to break loose from your local market and take advantage of all of the opportunity out there in the online world? If you are, I want you to go to fitnessmarketingalliance.com forward slash mastermind. This will lead you to our level up mastermind group and all the information that you need to know. This is a group for high level thinkers within the industry. We're ready to break free. So go check it out. It's fitnessmarketingalliance.com forward slash mastermind. Let us know if you have any questions. Thank you again for listening. I greatly appreciate your support. We'll keep it up from our end as well.