Faith, Identity & Spiritual Path: Dr. Chris Nirvelorron

In this compelling interview, Dr. Chris Nirvelorron shares their extraordinary journey from a strict Southern Baptist upbringing, academic struggles, and military service to discovering their spiritual calling and healing abilities. 

We explore themes of faith, resilience, healing, and overcoming adversity as Chris reveals how they navigated complex personal and professional challenges,  reflecting on early questions around belief, the role of community, and the realities of military life, including the mental and emotional impact that followed. The conversation also touches on identity, family, and the experience of building a life outside of expected structures.

Over time, earlier experiences began to reconnect, leading Chris toward a more expansive approach to spirituality — one that draws from different traditions rather than staying within a single framework.

This conversation explores what it means to question, step away, and return in a different way — and how a personal path can take shape across many stages of life.

Key Takeaways

• Early belief systems can shape identity, but questioning them can open new directions.
• Community can exist independently of belief — and often has lasting impact.
• Learning differences can lead to alternative ways of processing and understanding the world.
• Military experience can create long-term mental and emotional pressure, even beyond active service.
• Suppressing identity (beliefs, sexuality, or experiences) can lead to fragmentation and internal strain.
• Personal crisis can act as a turning point rather than an endpoint.
• Spirituality does not need to follow a single structure — it can evolve over time.
• Exposure to multiple perspectives can shift rigid thinking into curiosity.
• Healing practices can emerge from earlier life experiences, even if not understood at the time.
• A sense of purpose can come from connecting differences rather than choosing one side.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron is a Doctor of Divinity from the New Seminary, an ordained senior associate Interfaith minister, certified spiritual coach, and certified Divine Light energy healer from the mystic esoteric schoolhouse of Spiritual Arts Institute.  

Dr. Chris is gender fluid and goes by no pronouns. Being of service means mentoring, guiding, and leading souls across the USA in their life goals, spiritual pathways, and physical ailment needs. 

Dr. Chris utilises years of study and practice to ensure each client receives a custom package of offerings to ensure their definition of success is achieved. Additionally, Dr. Chris hosts community engagements both virtually and in-person to enrich perspectives and knowledge that individuals can select from. 

Connect at: IG, Website

Transcript

Intro and listener questions

Regina Sayer 0:00

The first thing I want to do to open this show is thank everybody who follows the podcast, everybody who follows us on social media, and everybody who shares our posts, who shares the episodes, who comments. I'm so grateful for all of you because without you, the show would not be expanding like it is. Yes, it is taking time, but it's worth it because hearing back from some of you about how the stories have touched you and how some of the information that's been shared has really helped you to understand your own journey and your own situations. That's been something that is truly amazing and that I'm grateful for. Now, getting to this week's show. This week is with Dr. Chris, and I'm gonna leave the last name as usual to pronounce. It's one of these shows where it's unpeeling the layers to find out more and more and more about who you are. Dr. Chris's story is just one chapter after another. Chapters that sort of have small links into the next segment, and then some that actually come full circle back to something that happened in an earlier part of their life and then connected them later. But the one thing that I really, really love about this episode is how it ends up in that Dr. Chris is somebody who really wants to bring people who are of different beliefs together so that our beliefs don't collide, but our beliefs make us stronger. It's one of the reasons that I reached out to Dr. Chris to be on the show because when I read that, I thought, wow, this is just really what this world needs today. It really needs these points of connection where people can learn to grow with each other, can learn to understand other points of view. You don't necessarily have to believe them and follow them, but you can be open to them and open to exploring, open to having more knowledge about something, and then making a decision, is it something that I want to take on into my own life or not? So I hope that you'll listen to this story. It's about somebody who started off down a religious path and then left it, started down a path of study and then left it, started down a path of a career and then left it, started down a military path and then left that, started down the path of one sexuality and left that. And started down the path of finding again all of these things fine-tuned into the person that they are today. So I hope that some of you out there will feel where this touches you and will help you to open up to explore your own path as well. So thank you again for listening and enjoy the show. Hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Wisdom Without the Guru. I'm your host, Regina. So today, as usual, we've got some questions for you to consider that are relative to the podcast content with our guest. And um I think these are some very important conversations that we're going to have today, and that they could be relative to you or to somebody you know. So please stay tuned. So here we go. Think about this. When you think back to your earliest sense of belonging, was it in your home, your church, your school, or somewhere entirely unexpected? What's a moment from your childhood that still shapes how you make decisions today, even if no one else would see the connection but you? Then this is something that I'm sure we can all relate to. How did the path you imagine for yourself as a teenager compare to the one you've actually walked? I know mine is nothing at all what I thought it would be. If someone else knew you from the roles you've held in your life, what part of your story would they completely miss? So, in other words, what part did you hide or that they just never noticed? And what's one belief you were certain about in your early years that you now see in a completely different light? And the last question is about resilience. When you hear this word, do you think of battles fought or peace you found? So today's guest, Chris, I'm not even going to try to pronounce your last name. You're gonna have to pronounce it for me. You can't even say Nirvelorron. No, please, please help me out here. What is your pronounce your last name?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 4:56

Nirvelorron.

Regina Sayer 4:57

Nirvelorron. Oh, I was close. I was close. Okay. So today's guest has lived many lives in one, from a strict Southern Baptist childhood in a small town to serving in military intelligence during a humanitarian mission in Bosnia, to discovering her calling as an interfaith minister and healer. Her path has been anything but linear. Along the way, she's navigated learning challenges, military trauma, profound questions about faith, and the joys and struggles of parenthood. She now dedicates her life to uniting different spiritual traditions, helping others heal, and living proof that your purpose can grow out of every season you've survived. So welcome, Chris. And I'm not sure, should I say Dr. Chris? Either's fine.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 5:42

I'm fine with this Chris. We don't have to have the formalities.

Regina Sayer 5:47

I just want to preface this podcast by saying that when Chris contacted me, first word I saw was interface and connecting people of all different beliefs, spiritualities, and religions. And I thought, oh yes, I really want this person on the podcast because this is something I think truly divides us when it could unite us. So thank you so much for agreeing to be on the podcast. I really do appreciate it. Thank you for having me. So we have a lot to cover in this podcast because you have really been through a lot. You have lived through a lot, you've seen a lot, and you have transformed a lot. So let's start right in with talking about growing up in, I believe, Southern California and talking about what that was like, the structure that you grew up in. You were Baptist. And I'm not sure if the correct term is Southern Baptist, but you can actually expand on that. Just talk about this whole dynamic that was happening because it was pretty intense. What was the role that you had cast upon you in your family? And looking also through the eyes of a child, how you were viewing this role at the time, and what were the types of places that you could go to or turn to for help and support, be it friendships, be it some kind of institution like school or a church or some kind of organisation you belong to, or a family member, anything like that?

Growing Up in a Southern Baptist Community

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 7:17

Yes. So I grew up Southern Baptist with um an all-American family of mom, dad, brother, dog, cat. If you ever watched the Beaver Cleaver show, we had that neighbourhood. We knew all of our neighbors, our parents knew each other, but you weren't getting away with anything. And at the same time, we were very, very active in our church. My parents lived wreathed building churches from before I was born. When we had located up in Riverside, California, the church that we joined was Mira Loma Southern Baptist Church. And it was a small town community church where every family knew every member. We were at church seven days a week. I can't even imagine that. Yeah, seven days a week, and Sunday was an all-day affair. Starting out at nine o'clock, and you weren't getting back home till about nine o'clock at night. It was mixed in with different food fellowships or whatnot for the afternoon and then dinner. A bunch of training sessions. You had Sunday school, you had regular service, you had church training, choir training, and then an actual evening service on top of that. Later we had different aspects uh like as as a six-year-old in the church, I was very influential and I didn't realise how influential I was until we had this um vacation bible school. And neighbourhood parents were coming to the church to bring their child children because Chris said to bring them. And then, oh by the way, Chris also said that they were supposed to get saved. And so what is this saving business about? And so I didn't realise the impact until later on when I was in high school, and due to a catastrophic situation in the church where it split due to embezzle embezzlement, I left the church, everything that I had known kind of crumbled. And so I left the church and some of my church buddy friends had met me at high school and they were like, Hey, how's it going? And I said, Church, F church. And when when I said that, I didn't realise the impact I was making on that individual's life because that individual looked up to me if I could do anything and they could do anything. Later they found themselves on death row.

Regina Sayer 9:41

So what were some of the things that you were leading up to the F church moment, apart from the embezzlement?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 9:48

Well, I started out as a youth activist. You know, we we went out constantly preaching the the tracks, the Jesus tracks. I was the Jesus freak, hey, come to church. Uh, and here's how you get saved by the ABCs or the Roman pathway, you name it. I knew how to do it. Very involved there, involved in church camp. So every every summertime we were in in a church camp in Idlewood, California. And uh we would host for the lead up, we would have like these youth work groups and stuff so that the youth could earn the money to pay for the camp. It's a very wholesome community during the week. The parents would play pinochle at anybody's given house. We would go to anybody's given house for fellowship during the week. I didn't have my extended family too much in California. They had all moved off to a different state. So my mom used to describe the Mira Loma family as our extended family. If mom was not available or dad wasn't available, I could call up Bob, I could call up Don, I could call up Linda, I could call up Cindy. Any any one of them would be come running and help us out.

Regina Sayer 11:07

You also mentioned that you asked as a child, your mother, what makes our religion right and everyone else wrong? I mean, why why did you start going down that path? I mean, what even prompted that question?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 11:20

So up until sixth grade, I was in a parochial school, a solo Christian school. It really reinforced everything that I was doing in church. And then at the conclusion of sixth grade, I asked my parents, I'm like, can I just please go to public school? Please let me go to public school. And they said, Yes, you can go. And upon my first day of of school, uh, I had the shock of my life. Students were cursing out teachers and not getting in trouble. And I just I came home with a complete meltdown. And at the same time, I was also getting exposed to Jehovah's Witness, Mormons, other faith traditions. And these are my friends now. And I'm like hearing the sermon at church, and I'm like, wait a minute, so you're telling me all my friends are gonna go to hell because they're not in the Southern Baptist Church? And I had I had invited one of the friends over thinking I'm gonna convince them that they need to switch from their religion to my religion so they're not gonna go to hell because I didn't want to lose my friend. And we were sitting at the table, and my mom was sitting on the couch, kind of listening to the discussion. I'm going through the Roman halfway in the Bible. The other person has their Bible out, and we're counselling back and forth. And in the end, they said, Well, this has been interesting. You gave me a lot to think about, thank you, and they left, and I was forlorn. And I went to my mom, I'm like, what makes our religion so right and everybody else's so wrong? And she was like, I can't answer that for you. You're gonna have to go on your own path and figure it out for yourself. And little did she know what she was opening up Pandora's box, can of worms, all what you want. I set out on a venture and I s I went to every different religion out there, and I honestly couldn't find a faith tradition that spoke any different than my own. Only difference and only reason why I went back to my own was because I knew when the pastor was interpreting the Bible versus speaking the Bible because I was so familiar with the doctrine, and other ones it was a little difficult to understand. Okay, do they really believe this or is is this really stated? And so, yeah.

Regina Sayer 13:43

So your parents were they sound like, even though they were strict and they were going to church all the time, they were quite open to letting you discover your own path. They were.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 13:52

Well, yes, they would, you know, every morning we had prayer devotion at the table, the daily bread that these pamphlets that are only like a three by five booklet, and it has a saying for every day. We would wake up, do the daily bread, do our prayer, go to school, whatnot. And it didn't matter if I was in high school or what we were doing the daily prayer. But at the same time, they understood that it's a personal choice, it's a personal relationship with God. And while they may have really wanted me to follow their path, they can't make me follow their path.

Regina Sayer 14:28

And do you remember as a child, well, and even into your teenage years, being in that environment until you said F church, how you felt? I mean, did you believe? I mean, did you feel supported? I mean, what was that connection that you had or that you remember having, if any?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 14:48

The connection that I had with God was very strong. The connection with the church, it was really the community. It was the people. It wasn't what we were learning. It was the genuine, hey, your mom's sick, I'm gonna take you to school. Or, hey, dad's been delayed. I'm I'm gonna go ahead and help out. And and it wasn't just them giving to us. We were doing the same thing. It was a constant give and take community. It was so strong. It's so strong that in fact, today I still have personal relationships with many of those church members.

Regina Sayer 15:25

Yeah, I think back to my own Catholic growing up and going to church all the time, and I had my issues, whatnot. But there was always, you know, they were always having these gatherings, potlucks, and these types of things. And and even after I left the Bahamas, you know, it would always be members of the church who came and looked in on my mom and who helped. And at the very end, when my mom was not in a good way and on the way out, it was people that she knew from church who were coming and helping and offering help with me and our family. So interesting, this community that still, despite whatever you believe about your faith, there is that community that supports. Thank you for reminding me of that, actually. That's important. That's important to remember.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 16:09

The interesting thing is both my parents have since passed recently. It was really the Mira Loma Southern Baptist Church members that reached out to my brother and I. It wasn't their current church. It wasn't their even even the church in between that reached out to us. That primary setting of Mira Loma Southern Baptist, it no longer exists. The church no longer exists, yet the members still exist, and we still call each other the Mira Loma Southern Baptist family.

Navigating Learning Challenges and Relationships

Regina Sayer 16:42

Interesting. All these years later. Okay. So uh you also spoke about the fact that when you were a kid that you had learning struggles in school. So talk about that and what that meant for obviously advancing in school, and then also for relationships as well.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 17:02

I was never able to understand. Like if I read a book, I could read the pages on the book, and then the teacher would ask me, so what did you read? I had no idea what I was reading. Didn't mean I couldn't read the words. I read the words. I just had no comprehension of what it was that I was reading. And so I had to learn a different way. And as I was learning a different way, I basically self-taught myself to memorise everything that I learned, everything that I saw. It kind of drives my wife crazy to this day. Because you'll get she'll make a a statement and I can quote her for verbatim what she says, and she'll but anyway, I would do that in school with the teachers, and so that I was kind of that was my way of processing and learning. And so fast forward, I didn't realise that that's what I was doing. It just happened. And then I was in high school, and Miss Ryan, my chemistry teacher, I had straight A's in her class, knew exactly what I was supposed to be learning about chemistry. I was infatuated with chemistry. And so she gave us a pop quiz. I'm like, oh, okay, I was first first one done with the pop quiz. Took it back. I'm all proud of myself. And after class, she says, Hey, Chris, can you stay back? She's like, I want you to go to the board. I'm gonna give you an equation. And I was like, okay, so went to the whiteboard, did the equation. That's what I thought. You failed your quiz. I'm like, I was devastated. Like, what do you mean I failed the quiz? I did every step you told me to do. And she says, No, yeah, yes, you did steps, but you did them according to a certain formula, and that formula does not apply to this equation. And unfortunately, you can no longer come to my class during this. You gotta go to the library. So during class, I went to the library and she taught the class, and then afterwards I would spend my brunch time in with Miss Ryan, she could teach me the concepts so that I could learn chemistry. But that was my first aha moment of oh, this is what I'm doing. This is and so it it helped me in my other classes to recognize I gotta I gotta take a step back. I can't just take it at face value.

Regina Sayer 19:27

Have you ever figured out what this type of particular type of learning is?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 19:31

I never had any formal testing to understand it. I knew that I had uh tutors in my primary school years from first through sixth grade, and then even in in high school, I would have tutors for math or tutors for English comprehension as far as like how to write essays and stuff. Because teachers get up there and they they say, Okay, this is what you're gonna do, but they're not really like teaching the concept. They would say stuff like, What's the main sentence? And I'm like, I don't get that, I don't know what that means. I even say that to the teacher, I'm like, Well, what's the primary purpose? And I'm like, I still don't get what you're talking about. So it took a long time for me to really grasp whatever a teacher would kind of put out there.

Regina Sayer 20:20

Did that take up a lot of your time having to learn differently? And so that affected your friendships?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 20:26

Yes. Um, I remember my brother, things came easy to him. And so he would we would come home and have homework. We had to sit at the table and do our homework before we could go play. He'd sit down for two seconds. I exaggerate, but literally it just seemed like he wasn't there for very long. I'm there till eight, nine o'clock at night at the table, still doing homework. And so I didn't have friends. And I would go to my mom and I'd be like, How come my brother gets all the friends? Or how come learning comes so easy to have? I don't know. I just know that there's a special plan for you somewhere.

Regina Sayer 21:06

Were you involved in sports or anything so that you at least had this type of team friendships?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 21:12

Mom and dad both believed heavily in team sports. And actually that kind of got me a little in trouble because they also believed in a lot of activities. So in fourth grade, I was taking piano lessons, golf lessons, I was on a softball team and doing horseback writing lessons. And so I had all of this on top of church every day, on top of I also have to do my school. And so the teacher had contacted my mom about holding me back. And so my mom took me out, it was just two of us, and she she explained to me what the teacher wanted to do. And I said, Mom, I can do it, but I gotta cut out some of these activities. And she said, Okay, what do you want to cut out? So I cut out the writing, I cut out the golf, I cut out the piano, but I would not give up my softball. So that was the only one that I held on to.

Christian Rock as a Point of Connection

Regina Sayer 22:09

I played that well into high school. And at least that gave you some kind of friendship during the sport, at least. Okay, so moving on. So these interfaith counters, encounters that you kept having. So you talk about the one that you just had this Bible-to-bible discussion with your Jehovah's Witness friend. And then you said you also had another agnostic friend that you kind of shared your beliefs through a Christian rock band. And I actually remember this band, Striper. I think they were quite well known.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 22:40

Yeah. Yeah. One of my friends in middle school, she basically was an atheist, but she was really heavily into heavy metal. And that was back in the age where you had heavy metal, you had new wave, alternative. We had all these different categories. So she was in the hard, hard stuff. So we were sitting on the bench one day and just kind of talking. She says, I don't get why you're so into this Jesus stuff. And I said, Well, I really don't get why you're so much into this heavy metal stuff. So she said, Okay, what is out there that I could maybe understand you with? I said, I got a band for you. And so I uh introduced her to Striper. So she picked up the album. In fact, then we actually had albums, and she started,

Regina Sayer 23:31

we do now, they're coming back.

Family Responsibilities From a Young Age

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 23:33

Yeah. So she picked up the album and she came back. She's like, I really like this band. This this is a good band. And then from there, it it kind of grew, and she she went into some of the other more heavy metal Christian bands, kind of opened her eyes to God is not in a box. God can be expressed in many different ways.

Regina Sayer 23:53

Yeah, there's something else that uh we kind of glossed over, is that you had this caregiver role as well within your family because of the responsibilities that your mom put on you. So talk about that a little bit because that's quite I mean, we've already heard like everything else that you're doing, and then you've got this as well. And this is quite a heavy role for someone quite young.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 24:17

Yeah, so my mother was diagnosed with migraine headaches. Uh she she had them from the age of nine until she died. And these migraine headaches were so intensified, they would burn the bed for two, three weeks at a time. And so during those times, I had to make sure that my brother and I were fed or that my dad had some food. My dad was a police officer. So he's at work all day, and when he comes home, he's hungry. My dad suffered through my i as he called them, my mashed pork and beans and hot dogs meals because apparently I would stir the beans too much. Then my mom, this back when you would actually mail off your bills, your your payment to your bills, my mom would write out the checks at the beginning of the month and put dates on envelopes. And then at the end of the counter, all those envelopes were stacked up, and and it was my responsibility every day to check the dates to make sure that the letters got out into the mail on time, especially when she had migraine headaches. My earliest memories was I was five years old when this was explained to me that I had to do these things and uh cooking from five until I left home.

Regina Sayer 25:35

A lot of things out of the can, no doubt.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 25:37

Yes. Interesting enough, my brother is a much better cook than I am. He's a fabulous cook. I was more about practicality. Okay, this will feed everybody. Here you go. Uh, and a very strict rule follower, okay, it just says this. And I remember once my mom asking me to make chili, and I said, Okay, how do you make it? And so she was telling me how to make it, and then she came up behind me and she put in all the seasonings. I turned around and I'm like, So what did you put in it? Oh, I just put the seasonings in. I didn't know what she put in. So I never could make chili because I did not know how to do it. Whereas I would be studying late in high school. My brother would come in, he'd be like, Did you eat? I'm like, No, I haven't had anything. He's like, Okay, you go into the kitchen, you'll whip me up all these different meals and come back, and you'd be like, Okay, here's some food for you. And it's all the stuff that my mom would make. I had all the seat. I'm like, how do you know how to make that? Mom showed me. So he had the mat for understanding a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and I could not comprehend a little bit of this, a little bit of.

Regina Sayer 26:49

That sounds like my son because I have a habit of doing that, looking at two or three recipes and combining them into what I think is right. Oh no, nah, let's put this instead. He gets so frustrated with me. And he's like, I'll buy the book. It has to be if it says a pinch, it's a pinch.

College Experience and Expanding Worldviews

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 27:07

That would be me.

Regina Sayer 27:09

Okay, so let's move on to the fact that you then went to college, university, and you earned a degree in business economics. So why did you decide to study that?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 27:23

Well, I had actually wanted to become a lawyer. And the problem is in order to be a lawyer, you have to go to school for seven years. There was basically about four years between myself and then my brother coming in. Well, not four years apart, but just our schooling was four years apart. And so my parents said, Look, we can only afford four years, and we need you to be able to have a degree that you can do something with. And poli sci is not gonna get you something that you can do something with.

Regina Sayer 27:54

Poly sci is political science.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 27:56

Yes, political science. So my um my dad says, I think you would be a great CPA, like a certified public accountant, because you're so good at math. And I'm like, okay. And I kind of looked at him like that, and he was like, You have to have something that you can do with your degree. And so I said, Okay, fine. So I signed up for the business economics because that was halfway to being able to then you would just take a certified test at the end. About three quarters of the way through, I was ready to unenroll in college because I was just over it. My parents relinquished and said, Look, you can do whatever you want to do, but please finish the degree. And so I said, Okay, so I actually minored in political science. And you can actually see on my transcripts that the political science grades were A's and B's, and the other ones were C's and sometimes D's. Because I had no interest in accounting whatsoever.

Regina Sayer 28:56

And what was college like for you as well? Did you expand and grow in in your friendships and also your view of the world and how life was?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 29:05

So I actually had my first introduction because you have to take a lot of different core classes, and one of the core classes I took was an introduction to world religion. It was there that I learned about Hinduism and and then about Taoism, and also it was called women in religion, and the different things that they had in each of their religions and whatnot. And I was like, wow, okay, so there is more out there than just southern Baptists. But in college, I was still a part of Baptist Student Union organisation. We had a a group of us, there was about 15 of us, and we would go to all the different churches doing worship sessions with their youth, trying to get them infatuated with God. So the friendships there, I actually two two individuals. I went to another church called Chino Hills Baptist Church. I uh went to the same college I went to, and to this day we're still friends. They're still in the path of Christian faith and in all the confines of that Christian faith. I'm not saying that I've left my roots, I've just expanded my roots.

Gay Pride Early Exposure

Regina Sayer 30:23

Yeah. And was it difficult in university at all? Because you're exposed to even more people. And I'm not sure at what time you said you were exposed to a gay pride parade as well. I'm not sure. Was that during university or earlier? That was actually earlier.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 30:39

The very first one I was about twelve or thirteen, and it my parents were watching the news and it flashed up about this parade that took place in San Francisco. It was a uh gay pride parade, and my parents were like, why would they expose themselves this way? Why would they be so obnoxious? Fast forward and I look back on that and I'm like, that is the wrong way that the LGBT community needs to express itself. If if we want acceptance in any way, we need to show that we're really no different than others. Going going to the extreme, families that are trying to have moral values of not exposing public displays of body parts and and whatnot, that doesn't entice people to like you. It doesn't entice people to view you as you're okay, you're of sane mind. Instead, it sets you apart. Now, I understand the message that they were trying to out loud and proud, you know, I'm not ashamed of who I am. I get the message, but I think the message could have been packaged differently. As a consequence, a lot of us that wanted to come out didn't come out because we didn't want to be associated with that.

The Move to Military Service and Healing Abilities

Regina Sayer 32:02

Okay, and we'll come back around to that a little bit later. Going back to getting out of university, and then you started working in a bank, and then, well, that didn't last long. No, because accounting was just not for me.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 32:15

Being indoors, being locked down was very difficult. And so I went to my dad and I'm like, bored. And he says, Okay, well, you should join the service. And and I'm talking the military service, but this is what he said, he you should join the service. And I'm like, what? And he says, in the service, you're only in a location for approximately two years, and then you get to go to a different location. So you get exposed to many different styles and and many different jobs. You're not always gonna do the same thing, so your boredom won't be there. And I was like, Okay, well, if that's the case, which which service do I go into? And he says, Well, I think you should go into the Air Force. The rest of it, you're gonna have to be get a little dirty and and whatnot. In the Air Force, you don't have to do that. I was like, okay. And because I already had a college degree, most that go in with a college degree try to go out for the officer enlistment versus just regular enlistment. So I took the test for the Air Force for officership, and then I took the test for officership for the army. I got picked up by the army, but they wanted me to wait another year and a half, and I just could not stomach. I did not want to be in my job for another year and a half. And so I went back to the recruiter and I said, Hey, can I do this faster? He said, Oh, sure, because you've done all this, they'll just yank you out and they'll put you into officer program. And so hearing the rumours and my recruiter lied to me, I was like, Let me test this out. So I went and talked to multiple folks. Oh, yeah, that's that's exactly what happened. Well, no, that's not what happens these days. You have to go the right path. Uh so when I joined, I joined enlisted and found myself in a whole new environment.

Regina Sayer 34:09

Prior to that, you said that, sorry for skipping back, but this is an important point.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 34:13

Sure

Regina Sayer 34:14

at the age of 12, because your mom was having migraines, that you learned from a Japanese shaman some kind of acupressure. So talk about that a little bit because at 12, and also your mom is like stepping outside of probably more restricted views of what you should do holistic medicine-wise.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 34:33

Because my mom struggled so severely with migraine headaches, her adoptive parents had been trying to all these different alternative medicines, anything from Louise Hayes affirmation sayings to folic acids to magnetic necklaces. And my mom embraced them all because she just was so tired of having these dilapidating headaches, and she just wanted to live a normal life. So we were at church one day, and Marnie Griffiths uh came up to her and she says, I have a doctor for you, but it's not a traditional doctor. And she says, I'll take him. Who is he? Where is he? I'll I'll do it. And the doctor was Dr. Yu, and he was an acupressurist. He treated folks like Tommy Lasorda from the Dodgers for injuries and or migraine headaches. His claim was he could cure someone in seven sessions. Albeit those each of those sessions were very expensive, but he could cure you in seven sessions. So my mom went to the very first one, full-blown migraine all the way there. My poor father was having a stop off so she could throw up in bags and stuff, gets her there. Dr. Yu works on her. And after he worked on her, my mom sat up, looked at my dad, said, Can we go get a hamburger? And my dad said, I don't care how much it cost, you did that to my wife, we'll pay you. So she went back each week, and about the fourth, fifth week, the doctor said, I have two choices. I can either follow my samurai sword, or I can teach someone in your family or or circle of friends what I do so that you can at least have some relief. And she says, What are you talking about? He says, I can't hear you. So she said, Okay. Came home and she told me, she's like, You're gonna go with me. And I said, Me? Why not dad? No, you're going. I said, Okay. So the next session we went and Dr. Yu was only gonna show me five pressure points to do. And so I um watched him do the five. He said, Okay, I want you to sit over there and I'm gonna give your mom full treatment. So I watched him do the full treatment. He said, Okay, come back over here. I want you to show me that you know how to do those things I taught you. I proceeded to give my mom the full treatment. And he was like, In all my years, I have never seen someone be able to do what you just did. He says, I'm gonna tweak one area that you did. I want to show you a little bit different, only area that you messed up in. He showed me, and he said, You know what you're doing. You are a true shaman.

Regina Sayer 37:25

And then that came around later in life. That came back.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 37:28

Yes, it did.

Regina Sayer 37:29

So now he fast forward to being back in the military. So a number of things happened to you in the military. You said that as part of this, I guess, shamanic hands, or whatever it was that passed through or was already in you, or whatever, that people were coming to you when you were in the military needing this healing help.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 37:53

Yeah, so in basic training, you're put through a rigor of training. And one of the most difficult things is learning to wear boots that cut into your shins. So as you're wearing these boots and they're cutting into your shins, and you have to run in the boots, and they're not really formal formulated for your feet and whatnot, it causes shin splint. And so the shin splints can be so painful that the next day you're trying to march and folks are just falling out because they cannot march with the shin splints. I have one of my roommates, so each each room had about six bunk beds, and so one of the roommates was literally crying one night from just the pain. And I said, I can help you if you want me to. Please. I said, Okay, I just need you to lay down here. And I proceeded to do the acupressure that Dr. Yu taught me. And she got up and she's like, There's no pain. I said, I know. The next day, three or four more folks showed up. Hey, can you do to me what you did to the other one? I was like, sure. So by the time I left out of basic training, every night there's a long line of individuals outside my room, and I was doing the acupressure for them so that they could endure the training. When we went to our schoolhouse that trained you for your specialty, like, because I was gonna go for intelligence, uh, we called that a MOS a job, so our job training. They two or three friends that were in basic with me came with me to the new location. Of course, you're still going through the training and they're like, hey, can you help me out? By the time I got to my first duty station in Germany, I was trying to just run under the radar.

Regina Sayer 39:46

Everybody wanted me to help them alleviate their pain. And you found that you were also absorbing their pain too. Yes.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 39:54

And and I had yet to learn how to rid myself of their pain. That came by accident. I had done uh a healing actually in Germany, and by chance afterwards, I ended up going into uh a water park area, but became fully emerged in the water, and all of a sudden all the pain, and I was like, okay, so I can do the healing, but I need to be able to submerge in water for the the stuff to leave the body. It wasn't until some years later that I learned that I don't have to do that now. I can actually protect myself before I don't have to absorb anybody's pain, but I wasn't taught that.

Regina Sayer 40:37

How was their pain manifesting in your body? You were actually taking on the pain in your own physically in your body as well?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 40:44

Yes. So if you've ever watched the green mile, and you see that scene where the inmate goes and and he's pulling the cancer out of the wife, and then he goes and he blows it out of his mouth. That's kind of literally what was happening with me, but I wasn't blowing it out. I didn't know how to blow it out. So I was absorbing it. Someone's got a migraine headache, it's going right into me. Someone's got a backache, it's going right into it. I was absorbing everything that was in their body so that they could be healed.

Regina Sayer 41:18

I'm gonna comment here because I had something that was very similar, because when my mom was in the hospital, she had a roommate in her room who was equally as elderly as she was, since she was in her 80s, mid-80s. Um, this woman was really, really afraid, really afraid, and she was quite sick. And I just remember going to her, and because I speak these languages that I speak, you know, that tend to move and shift people into different spaces. And of course, I was doing Reiki and other types of energy healing at the time. And I went and I started talking to her, and I stood at the foot of her bed and I held her feet. And honestly, for me, I find that when you are holding somebody's feet, there's so much stuff that comes at you through the feet. Afterwards, I was literally shivering and I was so cold, and my mom is looking at me, getting worried, you know, and getting ready to press the button to call the nurse. And then suddenly, you know, and I and I've had this happen once or twice before, and I just started speaking in those languages as I speak, and I calmed right down and whatever it was left. And that woman, she's like, What are you, an angel? I don't know what she thought, what drug she was on. But so when you talk about this kind of releasing whatever it is, for me, it's I do it through the languages. So, but my mom was quite funny because that was the first time my mother had actually seen what I did and how it manifested. She's so ill herself, but she's getting ready to call the nurse to come help me anyway. So that story is just to say that, yeah, that does. You you kind of, if you're not careful, you take home that without even necessarily realising you are.

Navigating Conflict: Bosnia-Herzegovina Experience

Regina Sayer 43:04

Okay, so now let's move on because you then went to Bosnia, and of course, this was during the Bosnia-Herzegovina problems that were happening. And you went there as an intelligence specialist. Just talk a little bit about that. Don't necessarily go into the details of it, because probably you can't anyway. It's just that, you know, not everybody understands this type of scenario that people put themselves in and how it must mentally and you talk about this part of as calling your parents up as well because of the fear. So talk about that, please.

The Unspoken Mental Toll of Military Responsibility

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 43:39

Yeah. So when I got to Germany, I was immediately sent down to Taszár Main in Hungary in support of the Bosnia-Herzegovina effort. And part of that effort was we had to formulate or consolidate all the different minefields. During that conflict, so many minefields were created and it they were just everywhere to where you you'd be walking on a path and folks are just getting blown up because they didn't realise that there was a a minefield there. So part of the humanitarian mission was to locate, identify, and tag out these minefields. And it wasn't just the US there, it was a NATO effort. And so we had Brits, we had the French, the Dutch, all of us were down there formulating, consolidating the information. Here's the difference though. The US has never done a humanitarian aid effort for the Bosnia excursion. They've done war conflict. And war conflicts, you don't really have allies. You do, but you don't. And so you can use your own mapping systems. But in uh humanitarian aid, you're not doing this on your own. You're doing this with others. And so the US would use a mapping system called WIGS 84, a world globe 1984 map, is what the WIGS 84 is. However, those that had been on humanitarian aid before with NATO used the international mapping and those maps so that they transverse countries. So we would get the grid locations for the different minefields from all these different organizations or military institutes, and then and then our own, and we're populating them. And we're saying, okay, here's where where everything is, and yet folks are still getting blown up. It wasn't because we didn't incorporate their information, it was because we did not invert their information. So as a consequence, they told us that anybody that was converting that stuff would also have to sign up for the route reconnaissance tours. And so I'm one of the ones that are having to convert them, and so I had to go out on route reconnaissance. So we would go into Croatia, into Bosnia along the route that I said was clear. Put your money where your mouth is. Did you make that conversion? Did you call it out correct? Now you can't call home and say, hey, I'm going into battle. But at the same time, you want to be able to touch base with home. So I would call my mom or my dad sometimes would answer uh on the days that he wasn't working and say, Hi, how are you doing? Acting like nothing's wrong. And they're like, What are you doing? Well, nothing, I'd just call and say, I love you. They picked up on the pattern because after I would call them on that and I'd go out for a mission and I'd come back, I'd call them, Hey, how's it going? They're like, Oh, what did you do today? Oh, I was talking about out in the field. They understood if I was calling in the beginning, better start praying because they made the second call. So it um it took a very mental toll, knowing you're responsible. But now not only you're responsible, but you you could die along the route that you said was clear.

Regina Sayer 47:15

And were you able to talk to anybody about that mental? I mean, because that's a huge mental health kind of thing that's happening there.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 47:24

No. As much as they knew, my parents knew, they did not know. They only knew that I was in harm's way. They did not know the details. Only ones that knew about the details was the unit. These are my battle buddies because I'm putting them in harm's way or they're putting me in harm's way. This is who has your back, and that bond is strong.

Regina Sayer 47:47

And so, were you able to talk with them about this type of you don't really talk about it?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 47:52

No, you don't talk about fear. You can't linger in that mindset and be able to succeed. What you linger in is the camaraderie of they've got your back. They're going to what they're putting out is true. You have to have that belief that your friends are not going to put you in harm's way, or vice versa. That's the strength of the bond, and that's why any military person can look at another military person, never serve with them, but they will trust them with their life because we all know what is on the line for each other.

Regina Sayer 48:32

When you left the military, let's just jump forward a little bit. Did the mental load of that then sort of ease? I mean, because obviously you're carrying that for a while. And we'll get to the other stuff in a second, but just the fact of that, I mean, it's gotta when you come out, you gotta have some kind of release.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 48:51

Yeah, it really didn't release. Truth be told, it did not release because even though I left the military fairly early, I didn't leave the military because I was still serving the military through other means in the same kind of capacity. And so the very thing that I was doing in service, I did as a civilian. So the intensity was still there. And actually, I didn't get to finally leave that until about two years ago.

Regina Sayer 49:23

So let's back up to being in the military because you, like many women in the military, were faced with harassment. So talk about this and you know what that did to you physically and emotionally and mentally, it affected you. So you don't need to go into the details of it, but just you know.

Facing Harassment and Mental Health Crisis in the Military

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 49:48

We started at my first duty station in Germany. Non-commissioned officer took advantage of his rank to have his way. I was part of a jump package. Uh there was about five of us that were gonna transition. We were going from implementation force called I-4 to supplement uh supplemental force, which is S4. We were part of the jump package to make that transition. Unit that was down there was about uh a hundred strong, and we were downsizing to about twenty strong. He was a part of the twenty strong. As the members of the I-4 left were down just to us 20 members, he now is in charge. And he would give me various duties to do, and I had no issue doing the duties uh that we had to do or whatnot. But then he would take it upon himself to walk me back to the barracks, the structures that we were staying in, or the tents. If I refused, I found myself on extra duty. I found myself on shameless for the service, like, oh, my last name used to be Rosenworth. Rosenworth didn't do this, Rosenworth didn't do that, and so kind of setting me up for disciplinary action. There was one other warrant officer that was down there with us, and so he saw what was going on and he started to intervene on my behalf just subtly, so I could get through a mission, and then when we redeployed back into Germany, I was like, okay, out of sight, out of mind, move on, home dwell. I'm no longer under this guy because I was a part of a different squad. So I 'm thinking, okay, I'm I'm free, I'm clear. I survived it, don't need to relive it, let's move on. And my team had left out for lunch, but I wasn't quite finished with what I needed to do. So I stayed back, was finishing off my analysis. So I was the only one that was in the skiff. A skiff is a secured, enclosed room. He came up behind me, I didn't hear him come back. He came back early from lunch. He came up behind me and leaned over the top of me to place a coat for me, trying to say that he was trying to be nice. And he was like, I want the I want things to go back the way they were before. And I went white as a sheet. Luckily, another battle buddy came just as he was pulling himself back and kind of saw a little bit of the interaction, but not a whole interaction. So she called me into the bathroom and her and I were talking and oh well, I wasn't talking. She was talking, she was grilling me. What happened? I couldn't talk. I was stunned. She says, That's it. I'm recording him. And I said, You can't. That's all I could get out. You can't. It's gonna damage me. It's not gonna do anything to him. It's gonna damage me. He said, Fine. So I finally was able to gather myself. I went to another location in the skiff to deliver what I had stayed back for to my warrant officer. And he came up again, and this time he touched me. And the warrant officer saw everything that transpired, and she was like, Has this happened before? And I just looked at her and she says, This is not right. I need to report this. And I'm like, you can't. I'm the one that's gonna suffer. And she says, I legally have to report it. I begged her not to. She told me she wasn't going to, trying to keep me calm, but she had to follow orders. She reported him. Long story short, he ended up uh being brought up on charges. This was not the first time that he had been accused. I was a part of that detail before, that had been interrogated before. So this was yet the second interrogation of it. As a result, he was actually supposed to his next duty station was supposed to go work at a prominent location in the States at the National Security Office. And he lost that position. And he got sent to a different location down in Texas. I'm thinking, okay, I finally survived yet another incident. I get deployed down to Texas in preparation for yet to go back to Bosnia again. I'm down there, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do for my job. And all of a sudden, he walks into Skiff. I didn't know that he was associated with the unit or anything like that. And I just I went white as a sheet. And I actually ran out of the SIF because under orders, we were supposed to be a hundred feet away from each other. And the sergeant at the time, that my sergeant came out to me and was like, What are you doing? Are you going A-WOL? What are you doing? And I just lost it. I totally went off on sergeant, basically screaming, he's not supposed to be here. He's not allowed to be here. He and I just unleashed. When she finally got me calmed down, heard about everything. He said, Okay, I want you to go back and hunk out at our other location. I'm gonna look into this. He was then yet again removed from the situation.

Regina Sayer 55:26

You had some um physical injuries as well that were a little bit related to this person because of your own emotions and how upset you were. You did something to your back, I believe, or

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 55:40

yeah, that was back in Germany. I was getting ready to go for the next rank. I had been training pretty vigorously for all the different tests. I passed all the tests and I was supposed to go to the formalized training for the next ring. I had everything in order. Two weeks before I'm supposed to leave out, the first sergeant came up to me and he says, You're not gonna go. You'll just have to go when you get to your next unit. And so I lost it because I had given so much. I had done everything. This was actually supposed to be my reward for enduring everything. They had promised me, yes, we will send you there because you have complied with everything, we're gonna do this, and then they yanked it. And this was to become an officer, a non-commissioned officer, yeah. I was so angry, and and my unit was getting ready to deploy, so I went back to where they were loading up the trucks, and the trucks are the equivalent of a semi-truck. We have to load up the computer systems, and these computer systems on the boxes is a four-person lift, they're about 200-250 pounds. And I was so angry, I was lifting them by myself and retching them ink into the truck. And as I was doing it, my back ripped. And as it ripped, I went down, and the individual that was holding the door open went down to help me, and now the door swung shut, and as I was coming back up, I split my head open. So that puts you out of commission for a while. Yes. So now I get to the next unit, they're training me again. Finally rehabilitated myself. I'm supposed to be able to go back. I'm all excited, and the new first sergeant, he knew that I was going the very next day to go to this training. So he in his mind he thought he was doing something nice by not taking us for a long run. But everybody kind of had settled into this, oh, okay, first sergeant's gonna run us, we're gonna do a two-mile run. He started the run, we went around the parking lot, and we come back and he calls out quick time march, and nobody is ready for this quick time march, and that's going from a run to a walk. And so we come from a dead run to a walk, and my hip, my back all ripped. You could hear the pop throughout the entire formation. So, of course, he heard it, but he wasn't sure who it was. So he was like, Okay, I want to recognise Rosenworth is gonna go to the next grade. So he calls me out, and you have to execute a right turn and a left turn properly. I can't really move my leg properly because of what I just did to it. Tears are streaming down my face because I am in so much pain, but I'm trying to do everything I'm supposed to do. So I get up to the front and he knows. He knows now that's what I heard. And he said, You need to go to sick call. And I said, No, for sergeant, I'm I'm I'm good. Take a couple Motrin, I'll be good in the morning, everything will be fine. He says, No, you're going to sick call. That is an order. And then he turned to my sergeant and he said, make sure she makes it there. And that was the end of my career.

Regina Sayer 58:58

You also at one point you had a little bit of a well, I'm not sure if you call it a little bit, since you walked into the ocean. You had a mental health crisis, and I guess this had to do with the harassment.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 59:09

Yeah. When I returned from redeployment from Bosnia back to Germany, I was authorised uh R&R back home. I went home and I went from weighing approximately 155 pounds to weighing about 115 pounds. When I got off the plane, my brother, my mom and dad, they all met me in the airport. That's when my brother went to hug me and immediately backed off. And he was like, My God, what happened to you? I said, Oh, nothing. I'm good. We got home and my mom was trying to talk to them. I was just really out of it. My cousin and his wife were visiting and they were gonna go to the beach. My mom handed me credit cards. She says, I need you to go with your cousin to the beach and don't come back, the same person you are right now. So I went to the beach, and for me, the beach has always been a healing place for me. But at that moment, I was pretty much done with the military. I was done with every I had lost everything. I lost who I was, and I didn't see a way out. So I told my cousin that I was just gonna go out for a walk on the beach, and he said, Alright, I guess I took too long. So I went walking out on the beach out into the ocean with the plan that I wasn't coming back. And he came running out after me and pulled me out. He prayed with me and and whatnot, and that was the first breaking of everything that I had held in.

Regina Sayer 1:00:44

And you still did not seek any kind of um therapy or anything.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:00:50

No, you can't in the military. You'll lose everything. They they will put you in a psych ward. Okay. And especially for the type of job that I was doing, I would have lost everything.

Regina Sayer 1:01:02

Okay. So that ended your military career. And so you got out and then what? What do you do? You're out. And also, during the time in the military, what had you discovered about your own sexuality?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:01:15

So in the military, had this uh I don't want to call it an awakening, but it kind of was. Apparently everybody else knew, but I didn't know uh that I was attracted to women. And so I had my first encounter in the service. But now I gotta keep that that separate because that doesn't resonate with my family. So my family knew nothing about that. Uh if I had said anything to my family, they would have disowned me. It was my thinking, was my belief. And so I basically I had a military life, I had a military family, and I had a a home family. Everything was separate because the military life was with this other woman. But the military family can't know about that because we have don't ask, don't tell. And then my family can't know about it. So it was very compartmentalised. When I got out, by then the encounter and I had actually called it off. I'm out on my own. Uh I'm looking for a new job, and the battle buddies that had been deployed with me in Taszár Main had um called me up and said, You need to come down here. And down here was down in Arizona. We have a job for you. They take care of me. They've always taken care of me. Okay, so I went down there. And during that time I found out that during one of the excursions of um the um training bits that we had was I was zapped with radiation and um some other things. And so I couldn't have children. The doctor was like, hey, you're not you're never gonna be able to have kids. And I said, Oh yeah, watch me. So I went out and I adopted my son.

Regina Sayer 1:03:11

And you adopted your son as a single parent, which is amazing that you were able to do that, because I don't think that's something that's easy to do.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:03:21

The only way that it's easy, and and that's not easy, but the only way that it was easy is to do international adoption. It's a very lengthy process, a very tedious process. It went a lot faster than I thought it was gonna go. Because, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. And that's why I deep dived it, I read every book about it, and every book I read said it was gonna take two to five years to make this happen. So I made the financial plan, everything for a two to five years go, and nine months later, I have my son. I'm like, okay, I wasn't quite ready for that,

Regina Sayer 1:04:00

but how did you deal with that being a mother suddenly so quickly and unexpectedly? And you know, you're still doing work with the military, not in the military, but doing work with them. Your family is living in a different state, you've got no real family support to take care of this new baby that's happening. So, what did you do?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:04:21

There was no real mental planning for this. Anyone that's watched that Billy Crystal movie Mr. Mom, there was a lot of scenes of Mr. Mom being replayed with me. Because I was not prepared. My son was seven months old when I went to go get him, and even that was not what was the original plan in my mind. I was gonna get a five-year-old to a 10-year-old, you know, something something that was able to take care of themselves a little bit. My mom being a preschool teacher, preschool director, was like, oh no, no, no, no, you need to go much younger because by those ages, everything's kind of set in. So she talked me into getting this baby. I'm like, okay, mom, what do I do with a baby? She says, That's okay, I'll be there. So for the first six weeks, she came and stayed with me to help me out with him. But then she had to go home. And I was like, Okay, great, you're going home, but I still have this baby and I gotta go to work and what do I do? I gotta say, I had one of the best personal family care providers, Miss Mara. She recognized what it was that I was going through, and she was like, I've got you. It's okay. And so I would I would drop my son off in the morning and go to work, do whatever I needed to do. She she was a surrogate mother, if you will, and she actually was a lot more qualified than I was to be a mom. In the evening, I'd go pick him up, and uh that became our routine for for the next five years.

Regina Sayer 1:06:01

And did you have any help from your battle buddies taking care of him and raising him? Raised by a village, kind of?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:06:08

Yeah, it it did become a raise by by a village, most definitely. Because it was through the battle buddies. We were playing soccer. Another soccer teammate introduced me to Miss Mara. I mean, it it it was just very serendipitous as far as them all kind of coming together. No, we've got this. My one battle buddy, Sarah, she threw me my um baby shower because we both wanted children. And so she actually got pregnant at the same time that I was putting in my adoption paperwork. Now here I'm putting in my adoption paperwork thinking I'm gonna take five years. Nine months later, I'm getting my son, and nine months later, she's having her son. Her son, Luke, and and my son Nick basically kind of came home together with within a couple of weeks of each other. We just kind of said, okay, this is how it's gonna be, this is how we're gonna do it. And we kind of came together as a community, and yeah.

Regina Sayer 1:07:12

And your battle buddies and these friendships that you had at that time, they knew that your preference was for women and they were okay with it?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:07:19

Yes, yeah, yeah, because this was the this was my tight niche. The this was my military relationship. So one of the battle buddies was my partner at the time of the adoption. And then we were friends with a couple that we were also stationed with. So all of us knew, and then anybody that started coming down to be a part of the team, the new team, were told, okay, this is this is how it is. Now there's no fear of don't ask, don't tell, because we're not in the military. We can be who we are. But my parents still didn't know.

Regina Sayer 1:08:00

That was my next question. What did you tell your parents and how did they take that?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:08:04

So well. They actually didn't find out until my son was about two years old.

Regina Sayer 1:08:09

Oh my goodness, okay.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:08:10

Yeah. And they only found out because they came for a visit, and I wasn't expecting them to come for a visit.

Regina Sayer 1:08:19

I can just see this scene.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:08:21

Oh, yeah, it was it was quite quite humorous. They walked in and they're it and they're like, Oh, so who's this? And so I introduced my partner, and they're going to go put their stuff because they used to stay in my bedroom when they would visit. I'm like, oh no, you can't stay there. My partner's stuff's there. And they're like, What? And so my mom went out to the backyard falling in tears. My dad's sitting on the couch having a conversation with my partner as if this was perfectly normal. So I looked at my dad and I said, I'm gonna go talk to mom. He said, Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I went out to go talk to my mom, and I said, Okay, I'll put you up in a hotel if you'd rather stay there, because I know this is quite the shock for you. She says, Yes, that's what I want. And I said, Okay. So I came in, tell my dad, and my mom says, Yes, our stuff. We're going to the hotel. And he says, What? And she says, We're not staying here. And he says, This is where my daughter is. You can go to the hotel. I'm not going. And so my mom followed suit with my dad of well, he's spoken to follow what he said. But then I didn't see or hear from my mom for another six months after that. And then she wrote me a letter basically apologizing, asking to rekindle my relationship. And so we we did, but it it took a bit for her to process.

Parenting, Spiritual Evolution and Energy Healing

Regina Sayer 1:09:53

I can imagine. Where is your spirituality in all of this? So we've talked about a lot of things.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:09:59

None existent.

Regina Sayer 1:10:00

But since the F the church, we haven't really heard about it.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:10:04

That's right. That's right. I really did not go back to the church until my son was about five years old. And the only reason we went back to the church is because my son came home from school. So Arizona School Systems is one of the lowest education school systems for public school. And so I wanted for him to have a fighting chance. So I put him in parochial school, a Christian school, because that curriculum is a little bit more rigorous. At the same time, he was exposed to a lot of the teachings that I was exposed to growing up. But I had yet to talk to him about any of this. So he would come home and he'd say, Mommy, why aren't we going to church? And I'm like, Why do you want to go to church? Well, my teacher says that you have to go to church. Okay. Why? Well, that's where you learn about God. Okay. Aren't you learning about God in in school? Yeah. Why do you need to learn more about God? And I'm just kind of questioning it, and we would have this dialogue. And so he says, Can we just try it? And I said, I'll take it to church. So I took him to church and he came back home after church. And he was like, That was fun. Can we do that again? I'm like, okay. And so I had my day job of working for the military as a contractor. And then I also was running my own business, helping folks redefine what they wanted their careers to be, and helping community members and whatnot. And we had this one client, his name was Dr. Roth. He was an elderly man who couldn't get around real well, but he had a massive property that needed mowing and all these different so I would take my son, I created what I called a go bag for him, and it had like reading material or it had coloring books and and whatnot. So he would sit with Dr. Roth. And Dr. Roth was like in his 80s, so it was kind of like a grandfather. So he got to have grandfather time while I was mowing yards and making coffee and doing different things for Dr. Roth. Then others would call up, hey Chris, could you help us move something or could you help us do this? And I'd always take my son. So one day he said to me, he was like, Can we go to church? Well, no, we're supposed to help out Mr. Neil and and Miss Kelly get the crib for their new baby. And he's like, But church is important. I said, You don't think helping people is important? And he says, Well, yeah. And I said, Well, what do they teach you in your Bible lessons? He says, To love one another. I said, Well, how do you show that love to one another? And he says, helping people? I said, So aren't we doing church? And he says, I guess so, mommy. Okay, let's go help out Mr. Neil. So I didn't withhold it from him. And as a matter of fact, in the summertime, he would go stay with my parents to give me a little bit of a break and him to have grandparent time. They would take him to church. And he had a blast. I never told him not to take him to church or anything like this. So he had full exposure, but then he would come back with all these questions. And so we would have uh philosophical discussions about it. We ended up moving to Virginia, and in Virginia he put his foot down. He says, Mommy, I really want to do church. And I said, Okay, we will do church, but we're not gonna do your church like your grandparents' church. I said, I can't go to a place that's gonna tell me I'm going to hell all the time. And he says, Okay. And so we went to a a new church called Metropolitan Community Church, MCC. And it was very open, affirming, and gave him what he needed, but allowed me to be who I am.

Regina Sayer 1:14:01

Had you married your partner by then?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:14:03

No, actually, that's where I met my partner. Yeah.

Regina Sayer 1:14:06

So your son actually facilitated that

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:14:09

in more ways than you know. My uh wife was his Sunday school teacher.

Regina Sayer 1:14:15

Okay. Interesting. So I've got in here that you also had an introduction to Reiki in the military or from a military friend, and you later joined something called the Spiritual Arts Institute. When did that happen and why did that happen?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:14:31

So for the Reiki, the battle buddy that found me with the sergeant that had harassed me was one of my closest friends. And she's the one that introduced me to this concept of energetic healing. I at the time do the acupressure, so I shared with her the acupressure, she shared with me the Reiki. And I was like, huh, this is this is interesting stuff. And then I was noticing even in my hands, I was like, okay, maybe this is kind of what's going on. I put that on the back burner, didn't really do much with it. But as I was with my new life now in Virginia, and now kind of really feeling the energies, like I could walk into a room and I knew if the energy was high, if the energy was low, I was very sensitive to it. I had learned don't hug anybody. It wasn't because I wanted to be standoffish, it was just because I was just I knew what was going on in their life, and so I was always very guarded. So at MCC Nova, that's northern Virginia, I had my first spiritual mentor, Alethea. She was talking with me about different concepts, and she had noticed that I wouldn't hug folks, and so she asked me about it. So I told her. She says, Well, you know, if you just kind of go like this, you're kind of protecting yourself. And I said, Oh, okay. So I started doing that, but then I learned doing this tells people you're closed off.

Regina Sayer 1:16:04

Yeah, and what Chris is doing for if you're just listening is she's putting her hands over her stomach like in a protective, like if oh, you would do if you're protecting yourself talking to somebody. That's what it looks like.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:16:15

Yeah, you know, you cross your arms, uh, you know, you come across mad or something. And so I had learned you you really don't want to do that if you're running relationships, you know, so it's more counterproductive. At the time I had met my wife and we we had started dating and then we moved in. Now all of a sudden I went from having energy to no energy, and I was really worried. And we came across uh some mutual friends from church, and they they started talking about this Reiki again. And it's the first time I had heard about the Reiki since military. You need to go see David, he'll help you. So I scheduled an appointment with David, and he did a Reiki healing on me. And I said, So does this mean I need to divorce my wife, or you know, how do I how do I do this?

Regina Sayer 1:17:07

Why would you say that?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:17:09

Because I was taking her energy.

Regina Sayer 1:17:12

Oh, okay.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:17:13

Or like whatever's going on in her life, I'm absorbing when I'm by myself, I could control my energy level. Yeah, but having someone, I couldn't control my energy levels. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So he started giving me my initial tools of how to protect myself and how to keep myself cleansed, that I didn't have to go get into a tub of water or into uh an ocean. Then, of all people, my hairdresser that I was introduced to is on the same spiritual path that I am on. You know, you you talk to your hairdresser about different things, and we got on this topic of spirituality, and he's like, I got a book for you, and it was called The Frequency. And so I read that, and one book led to another, and I got onto this book called Change Your Aura, Change Your Life. And now my childhood memories come flooding back because all throughout the book they're quoting scripture. And in the childhood, I had to memorize all these scriptures, and I'm like, this, this is what it is, this is what who I am. And so I contacted the Institute, it's Spiritual Arts Institute. I contacted them, got signed up for some courses. Now they taught me a whole nother energetic healing modality, whole nother way of protecting myself. It's kind of opened my eyes that I didn't have to give up God. I didn't have to walk away from God because of who I was, or because of what I went through, or because of what I believed. If anything, they gave me back my religion in the sense of I was taught scripture is is a living word, but I didn't understand that. Now I'm experiencing the living word, and I just love it.

Regina Sayer 1:19:02

You say you started shifting from earth energy to celestial energy. So, what exactly does that mean?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:19:08

So Reiki pulls on like the moon, the ground, the roots, uh, and whatnot. The energy healing that I have learned is actually coming directly from the celestial worlds. You've got the heaven worlds, and it's not just a heaven, there's heaven worlds. And the second heaven world has what we call all the light energies, and it's a colour spectrum, the colour spectrum of the rainbow, if you will. So you want inspiration, you call down the powder blue, and it's a powder blue of consciousness that is coming down. You want strength and courage and wisdom. You you call down the golden, and and it's coming from the heaven world, and it's facilitated by archangels and the celestial beings.

Regina Sayer 1:20:01

Apart from archangels, what are other types of celestial beings? I'm just curious because I don't know if it's the same thing that I know.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:20:10

In the spiritual arts construct, I'm caveating it that way because there are different, many different pathways. This pathway is aligned to kingdom of light teachings, and the kingdom of light teachings are associated with the angelic forces and with Christ's consciousness forces, the Holy Spirit, Holy Ghost, the saints. We refer to them as the holy ones.

Regina Sayer 1:20:39

Okay. So you started then doing that work. So you started then giving these types of energy healings to people.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:20:46

Yes.

Regina Sayer 1:20:47

And they were they people who were in the community or people who were outside of the community. I mean, when I say community, I'm talking about the religious community.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:20:55

Most of them came from external, like they didn't have anything to do with it. Right now, I've got six primary clients. This is fascinating. They talk about God working in mysterious ways and kind of bringing you back full circle. My six clients all suffer from migraine headaches. And so I'm able to use the light work coupled with the acupressure to bring both to them in ways that they've never had released before. Just yesterday, one of my clients, he was like, When I first started with you, I was taking 600 milligrams of caffeine tablets to get through the day. I'm down to 150 milligrams. And I've only seen him five times. Another lady that came to see me, she was like, I have never felt relief like that. She said, I came in here limping, I'm now walking out of here with no pain.

Interfaith Journey and Spiritual Coaching

Regina Sayer 1:21:53

But you also took it a bit further. You then went on to attend interfaith seminary and get ordained as a minister with a doctorate in divinity, certified as a spiritual coach and divine light healer.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:22:08

Yes.

Regina Sayer 1:22:08

So, what does all of that mean exactly in layman's terms?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:22:13

So going back to my roots and my mom telling me that I needed to find my part. My path isn't a single part, my path is an interwoven path. I have basically cherry-picked from different faith communities, different pieces that spoke to my soul that said, This resonates with me. And I have made it into my own spiritual relationship with God or with the divine or creator or source. I resonate with the name of God or the divine, but I am not put off by someone who says, I resonate with goddess, or I resonate with source or creator, because I recognise my path is my own path. It can never be anybody else's path, and your path is your path. And however you resonate, that's how you resonate in this cherry picking and kind of wanting to understand it. I was audibly told by Divine, your purpose is to bring all faiths together. Let the faith see what is common in each other so that they can unify to glorify me, to return to me. Because you all went out on the on your discoveries, you all wanted life experiences. That's why your soul went out there. I want to call my folks home, and you are help bringing those folks home.

Regina Sayer 1:23:45

So that would be Hindus, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Taoists, you name it. Everybody.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:23:53

Yes.

Regina Sayer 1:23:53

Okay. And how exactly are you doing that right now?

Creating Community and Connection

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:23:57

Yeah, so I have created an online community through the Mighty Networks that hosts different spiritual pathways, some through yoga, some through Buddhist uh meditation, some through breath work, some through traditional Christian type of ideology. I kind of wanted to create a place that folks could almost kind of go to a grocery store, if you will, almost the way that I did, and say, okay, I resonate this as my core, but I like these other pieces and I want to take a little bit. And so I have those offerings on this Mighty Network's community. That's one way. The other way is once a month we host gatherings, and we have anywhere from 10 to 20 people come together and partake in some sort of spiritual community fellowship. This Saturday, we're gonna do a Qigong Meridian Harmony gathering. In September, we're going to do a Native American gathering, but the community comes together and they're they're from all walks of life. We we do have Hindus in there, we do have Buddhists in there, we do have atheists in there. We've got all walks of life in there that are just want community. And community is one of the steps to healing.

Regina Sayer 1:25:24

Yeah, I love that. I absolutely love that idea. And you're in Georgia now.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:25:29

Yes, I am. I have only been here for a year.

Regina Sayer 1:25:32

So on your online portal that you have, you've just got different people who come who join and then who help other people discover what it is that they do. How does that work?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:25:45

The way that the community is set up, I've got it broken down into uh collective spaces. Any member can join the community, and then you can join whichever collectives, however many collectives you want to join. On Sunday nights, I lead a group. It's done virtually. So we've got folks right now chiming in from six different states. We meet for about an hour, sometimes hour and a half, depending on what the group wants to do. We open it up with a meditative breath work prayer. I vary it. And then we go into a discussion, then we have a collective space, or during the week, folks can kind of chime in. This is what's going on with me. So, in that regard, it's similar to Facebook that folks can chime in, but it's a controlled space. So you don't have to worry about an outsider boo-hooing whatever you're saying. Then another collective posts daily meditations at a set time. The gentleman that does it, he's also leading a Bhagavad Gita discussion. So each of the collectives kind of offers something a little different. Folks can pick and choose. I've got plugins to spiritual arts. So if you wanted to partake in some other meditative aspects, you could do that. If you wanted to plug into the interfaith seminary that I was part of, they have an interfaith temple. So I have the plug-ins to that. Folks kind of just go around and say, okay, I want to join this one this time, or I want to join that one.

Regina Sayer 1:27:17

Do you vet the people who are actually like doing the talks or providing the information?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:27:23

Yeah, so whoever's joining, there's an agreement. We have a governance board that makes sure that we're transparent, we're holding integrity to the space and to the content, but it's more about being open, firming, and inclusive.

Regina Sayer 1:27:42

Community, collaborative community.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:27:44

Very much so.

Regina Sayer 1:27:45

I love that. So, what is the name of this website? What is where can people connect with you and follow what this is?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:27:53

The easiest way is if you go to Lightworks.love all the connections to all the communities. If you want to join the Mighty Networks community, you can join via there. It will send you right to that link. If you want to subscribe to the YouTube, it gets a link there. Got a Facebook page. We've got them all. But the most centralized place is Lightworks.love.

Regina Sayer 1:28:21

And is there a membership fee to join that?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:28:24

No. No. No, there's no membership fees whatsoever. The fees come in for specific showcasings, such as like doing the drumming circle. We gotta buy the product to be able to birth the drums. So only in those instances are there fees.

Regina Sayer 1:28:43

These online communities and discussions and meditations, that's all free.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:28:48

Yes, it is.

Closing Advice

Regina Sayer 1:28:49

That's fantastic. I'm going to join. I think it's so needed. This talking that happens. And of course, when it happens across faiths, that means it's happening across cultures, it's happening across ethnicities, it's happening across social status, etc. And it's just creating this connection. I absolutely adore that. And thank you so much for going through this long podcast, but to really tell how you came to do this, because I think it's important to see how, you know, somebody started off one way, just kind of like fell off the wagon along the way, and then got back on, found themselves as a totally different person that they ever thought they would be. And, you know, if we go back to the questions I asked in the beginning, if you were to answer those questions, I mean, we see that they're answered in the podcast. So I'm gonna ask you to give what you think is the good advice given your experience and your inner wisdom. So what is it that you think is one of the most important pieces of advice that you can give to somebody who is seeking go inward?

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:29:57

first, listen to the spirit within you. And that's difficult because that's scary. We don't trust ourselves, we don't think we have the answers, but we have the answers. We chose to come into this life, we chose circumstances, and that's difficult for people to accept initially. But if you can get beyond the idea that you chose this, then you can understand the why you chose it, and that's the birthing of your spiritual journey.

Regina Sayer 1:30:31

Sounds like such simple advice, but difficult advice, Chris.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:30:35

Very difficult.

Regina Sayer 1:30:36

Yeah, because I think it's hard for people to accept that you chose a life, especially when people have really crappy lives, you know, or they think they have crappy lives, that you chose it. I'm sure people are out there listening thinking, why would I choose this? Why would I choose all these awful things that have happened to me? If you listen to a lot of the the guests who have come on the show, they have had some terrible things that have happened to them. Not everybody has, and that's not the point of the show, is to tell terrible things that happen to everybody, because that's not just not the case. But they all have come to this one statement that you just said. Somehow it chose it or it happened in order for me to be where I am now.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:31:18

Soul wants to grow and learn. And sometimes it's only through the most difficult of situations that you grow biggest.

Regina Sayer 1:31:27

I wonder what it would take for it not to be such a difficult situation for us to grow the biggest. But that's probably a whole nother podcast.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:31:37

Most definitely.

Regina Sayer 1:31:39

That is a discussion for your portal for your website there, I'm sure.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:31:43

There we go. Yes.

Regina Sayer 1:31:44

But that is definitely a question, you know, that I often think about. Why why is it that it seems like you have you grow the most when you have adversity? And why does it have to be that? And then also, and I've done a small clip about this, is that some people feel that because, you know, you're always kind of like sort of saying, okay, well, they've had such hardship and their hardship has been so much more than mine, you know. So that means that my growth is not as much as theirs because, you know, mine has not been as horrific as theirs was. So, you know, it's this comparison that happens. And that's I think where we get caught up.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:32:22

Yeah, if I can caution anyone, don't compare your life to someone else's. They're on a trajectory or learning some sort of divine attribute. Maybe it's patience, maybe it's unconditional love, whatever it is. But their journey is specific for a specific end outcome. To sit there and say, Oh, but they did this, and I'm you're right, your journey is not the same because your soul is going to a different location. That's why everybody's spiritual path is completely different. There are common alities, and that's why we have these traditions that kind of group together, but every pathway is separate. It's your own relationship.

Regina Sayer 1:33:05

Yeah, and I can just think of one sort of religious saying that I think is interpreted the wrong way is there, but for the grace of God go I, which makes it sound like, well, they are so much far off worse than I am, that I should just feel I mean, yeah, you should feel grateful for what you have, but to that you downplay your own issues or your own what's happening to you.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:33:30

Yeah, I would definitely agree that it is completely misinterpreted and it is used to put someone down. And that's not the way it was ever intended.

Regina Sayer 1:33:43

Okay. We are going to stop there because otherwise we could just go on for a while, Chris. I'm pretty certain. But that's why I'm going to join your community.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:33:52

Please, please. All is welcome. All is welcome.

Regina Sayer 1:33:55

So you heard that listeners, please go check out that community. I mean, if you are looking for something that reaches across all spectrums and maybe to have new understandings and perceptions of something else, another faith or another practice, anything, I think it's an excellent place to start as well and feel supported and not judged. The link will be in the show notes. So I just want to thank you so much, Chris. Thank you for sharing everything that you have and for doing what you do. Um I'm grateful that someone like you exists in this world. So thank you.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron 1:34:34

Thank you for having me.

Regina Sayer 1:34:35

Okay, listeners. Please leave a comment, share the show, share the episode, give your feedback about the podcast because that just helps us keep going and getting great guests like Chris. And until the next time, bye, everybody. Take care.