Leaving Control and Reclaiming the Body through Holistic Healing | Michelle Nermerich

Certified Holistic Practitioner, Michelle Nermerich joins me from Canada to talk about identity, chronic pain, domestic abuse, and the healing practices that eventually became part of her work with others.

Michelle’s story moves through several major turning points:

• growing up in a Catholic family with German heritage and being bullied because of that background
• living with undiagnosed dyslexia until the end of high school
• experiencing childhood sexual assault and later having that experience validated
• training in graphic design before a serious car accident changed what her body could manage
• moving into work as an aesthetician, then having to change direction again because of severe chemical allergies
• spending 22 years in a relationship that began with love bombing and became controlling and abusive
• living with fibromyalgia, chronic pain, medication, brain fog and PTSD
• rebuilding through movement, strength training, breathwork, meditation, sound healing, tuning forks, Reiki and neurohealth practices

Michelle also talks about how she began exploring different tools first for herself, and how those practices now inform her work with clients through sound healing, breathwork, meditation, Reiki, chakra balancing massage, and holistic aesthetics.

This conversation includes references to childhood sexual assault, domestic abuse, physical violence, suicidal thoughts, chronic pain, and alternative healing practices. Please listen with care and take what feels useful for you.

This episode is not medical advice. It is a personal story about self-trust, rebuilding, and exploring different forms of support when life, health, and relationships force everything to change.

About:  After a major accident and an abusive relationship, Michelle Nermerich turned her personal healing journey into a mission to empower others. As a certified holistic practitioner, she combines sound healing, Kundalini Reiki, mindset practices, and mindful movement to help clients overcome their own obstacles. Today, she is dedicated to guiding people toward deep personal growth, inner peace, and lasting transformation.

Connect at:  IG,  FB, Website

Transcript

Introduction

Regina Sayer 0:00

Gosh, this week has been wah, it has been so hot while I have been editing this podcast. There's so many times that I thought, oh no, I just can't do this. We have had really high temperatures here in Europe, and the time that I'm recording this, it is in June, and we have been up to 38 degrees, and we have no air conditioning, like I did when I was living in Singapore for nine years prior to coming back to Belgium. So I am trying to find every way possible. I am freezing water bottles. Oh my gosh, my poor cats. One is a rag doll, so she's got that double fur. I keep checking her to make sure she's okay. I already get up really early in the morning to go walk because I'm following my circadian rhythm. So I get up at 4 30, 5 o'clock in the morning, and I just start opening all the windows to try to let whatever cool air there is in the morning. And I feel so good about walking in the morning because going outside feels great. But it's worth it because this episode with Michelle Nemerich, and heavens, I hope I'm pronouncing that right.

Regina Sayer 1:17

Michelle joins me from Canada. Now I just want to give a little bit of a warning because there are some parts of it where she speaks about some abuse that happened during her marriage, and I don't want that to trigger anybody. She beautifully tells her story about how she gathered all her interest and knowledge in what she does now, which is along the lines of Kundalini Reiki doing sound baths with crystal singing bowls, and how she does massage using tuning forks, and so much more. I had actually done, I guess, the first part of Kundalini Reiki, or I don't even know, and I never knew that there was so much more to it. And she briefly talks about it in this episode, but we are going to be doing a special episode that will come out hopefully next week if I don't have another heat wave and I get it out on time. So please bear with me. I hope you do enjoy the show. I think that this is for people who are really interested in the metaphysical, who are interested in energy work, who are interested in alternative types of healing, who may have been told that they are going to suffer from some kind of illness and be in pain for the rest of their life. Maybe what Michelle does will help you somehow to manage it. I'm not saying that her way is the way, but it's something for you to consider. And also, I think that her story can give hope. Enjoy the show. Thanks everybody.

Regina Sayer 2:56

Hi everybody, and welcome back to another episode of Wisdom Without the Guru. I'm your host, Regina. So before we meet today's guest, let's pause on a few questions that cut across identity, health, and resilience. So, what does it mean to grow up with a sense of not quite belonging shaped by ancestry and the labels that others attach to you? What happens when a learning difference, like dyslexia, goes unnoticed until adulthood? How do we reconcile with sudden changes to the body, whether from accident, surgery, or illness, when they force us to rethink what's possible? And in our closest relationships, how do we recognize the moment when patterns of control replace genuine care? And what does it take to step away? How do we define healing? Is it something measurable by prescriptions and medical charts? Or can it also be cultivated through breath, movement, sound, and presence? My guest today has lived each of these questions. Her path began in design and eventually expanded into integrative healing practices that bridge science, self-care, and ritual. So, with that, I'd like to give a warm welcome to my guest, Michelle Numeric.

Michelle Nermerich 4:21

Hi.

Regina Sayer 4:22

She's recording on a cool day in Canada in her basement. And I am recording on a little bit hotter day here in Belgium with all the windows closed. I'm sorry to have you in the basement recording, but that's okay. Okay. So let's start with your background because you have a very interesting background with different nationalities coming into the scene that have caused some conflict as you were growing up. So talk about what your early life was like growing up, you know, what the family dynamics were, these types of safe places, if you had any at all, that were either with people or places or institutions. And, you know, in terms of spirituality, did it exist at that time in your family upbringing?

Childhood, dyslexia, heritage and early experiences of control

Michelle Nermerich 5:12

I was raised in a Catholic family. Both my parents made both me and my sister go to church every Saturday or Sunday. If we missed, we weren't good Catholics. So yes, there is always spirituality ever since I was a child. Just being a child and trained-brained like the family, I did accept the Catholic religion. I didn't start not going to church up until I was in my late teens. And then I started thinking for myself more. As for my family, my parents were really good to me. I have to admit, they were good parents. They helped me throughout life. I had dyslexia that went unnoticed ever since childhood, and my mom would make sure I would read, where the school system would not like, they wouldn't take the time of day to figure out what was wrong with me, why I was struggling with reading and writing. My mom, every day after school, would practice and practice. She is like, even though she was a German immigrant whose English wasn't the greatest, she would make sure that we sit down together every night for at least an hour and go over everything. So I wouldn't slip through the cracks and fail everything. So she was a very dedicated mother when it comes to that aspect. She was so dedicated. She just did not want to see her daughter fail in life. And if it wasn't for her, I would not probably be able to read and write.

Regina Sayer 6:43

Yeah, because you said your dyslexia was diagnosed in the last day of grade 12.

Michelle Nermerich 6:48

Yes, it was the day before my final exam in grade 12.

Regina Sayer 6:53

So that's what, 17 years old? Something like that? I think it's 12 grade 12 is yeah.

Michelle Nermerich 6:58

Yeah, I think it's 17 years old.

Regina Sayer 7:00

Wow. Yeah. So I'm not sure how you survived all that time. Well, your mother.

Michelle Nermerich 7:05

My mother. And I had a fear of public speaking. Yeah. So if it wasn't for my mother, I would not be the person I am today when it comes to reading. Like I loved picking up a new book and reading, especially when it comes to healing modalities. It's my biggest thing now. The more information I can get in my brain, the better I feel.

Regina Sayer 7:27

But you have this quite a unique family history that spans three countries. Some of that resulted in your being bullied.

Michelle Nermerich 7:36

Yes. It's a German background. My mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother were all born in the same house, but three different countries. My mum was born in Germany. My grandma was born in what's now Czech Republic. And my great-grandmother was born in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.

Regina Sayer 7:59

So it's the same house, but it kept switching borders all the time.

Michelle Nermerich 8:02

Yes. Yeah. So growing up, unfortunately, kids would call me names like Hitler's granddaughter. And I was quite mocked in elementary school for my German heritage. I was called Nazi. You name it when it comes squarehead, Kraut. Yeah. So growing up was not the funnest experience for me. And I believe a lot of that had to do with my fear of public speaking, just because how I was bullied.

Regina Sayer 8:33

Your accent, you said you also had a bit of a German accent. How old were you when just when you went to speech therapy?

Michelle Nermerich 8:52

It was part of an the elementary school program. I want to say grades three, four. They only did a little amount. And my parents paid for further speech therapy for me because they realized how it was affecting me. So in grade six, I did even more speech therapy to make the bullying stop.

Regina Sayer 9:16

Yeah. And for this bullying, did you ever report it to anybody? Did you ever talk to your parents about it?

Michelle Nermerich 9:22

I did talk to my parents about it. And that's the one part with my parents, they were like, well, there's not much you can do about it. Like they didn't know how to handle it. Yeah. And the school system didn't do much. So I just got used to being bullied growing up. It almost became like a normal thing for me.

Regina Sayer 9:42

Did you have any friends, at least, that you could turn to?

Michelle Nermerich 9:46

I did have a couple friends, and this is what made the whole Hitler's granddaughter and Nazi thing weird because both my two closest girlfriends were girls of different colors. My best friend, she was from Trinidad, and my other best friend was from Ghana.

Regina Sayer 10:04

Okay. You sound like me growing up in the Bahamas.

Michelle Nermerich 10:08

I should have. I just think they're such wonderful people. They're so happy and full of life.

Regina Sayer 10:20

Yeah, it's that's because it's too hot to get upset about stuff.

Michelle Nermerich 10:24

And just the way I see it, I don't judge anybody for the color of their skin because once we peel the skin back, we're all the same underneath.

Regina Sayer 10:32

Yeah. Yeah. But they weren't bullied, just you were.

Michelle Nermerich 10:35

No, they weren't bullied. I was bullied.

Regina Sayer 10:38

Gosh, okay.

Michelle Nermerich 10:39

They might have been, but they didn't tell me about it at the time. Like pretty much I hung out with the outsiders. I never was one of the cool kids, you could say. I always hung out with the outsiders and the people who accepted me for me.

Regina Sayer 10:54

Okay. And what were some of these types of outsiders?

Michelle Nermerich 10:57

I would say more the rebellious type. Especially in high school. It was more the rebellious types. Like we would call them the freaks and geeks.

Regina Sayer 11:06

Okay. Oh gosh. Have memories of university in in in uh the United States. Okay. So you also said that you had sexual assault as well that happened to you.

Michelle Nermerich 11:22

Yes. That was my cousin. When I was around nine, ten years old, he pulled me into it was like a upstairs in his cottage, like a little crawl space area that you could run into. Yeah, and he tried pulling my pants down. And if I didn't kick him away with my feet, I don't know how far it would have gone, but I was wise enough at nine years old to say this isn't right. And I started kicking him away from me. It did leave an emotional scar, I have to admit, because I always was afraid every time that side of the family would have get-togethers. Like, what is he gonna try? And he always was very huggy with me and kissy, and even his own stepdaughter would go on to me, like in the older years, saying, like, how he had a crush on me, and he would make that very clear to her that he had a very big crush on me growing up, and he was four years older than me. So he was 13 at the time, knowing he should know better than that.

Regina Sayer 12:28

And you told your parents about it, and they did something about it.

Michelle Nermerich 12:31

I did tell my parents about it, and they didn't want to tarnish the family name, so they just kept saying it was in my head. They didn't believe me. It got to the point where actually I thought it was in my head too, until my cousin's stepdaughter was like, No, he tried to do the similar stuff to me, his own stepdaughter.

Regina Sayer 12:51

When did you find that out?

Michelle Nermerich 12:53

When you were younger or no, I found that out in my, I'd say, late 20s, early 30s. We lost contact for a while, and then we found each other through Facebook and we just started chit-chatting and everything. I can't even tell you how it came, but we just started talking about it. Then we end up doing a phone call because we're like, okay, this is just too much to talk to over messenger, like typing out. So we got on the phone and just started talking to each other, and our stories were so similar. It was like, okay, this was not in my head. I did not make this up. And then especially when she confirmed about how he had this crush on me for who knows how long. It just was like, okay, I'm not the insane one here. Yeah. Because for a while I was questioning my own sanity, like just because my family kept saying no, no, no, my whole life.

Regina Sayer 13:45

And did you turn around and tell your parents after that that I was not making it up?

Michelle Nermerich 13:50

I did at the time my mom was already getting sick. Okay. So, and that was for her side of the family. And my dad, he actually did say he's like, I did always believe you, but my dad always did what my mom asked of him. Yeah. So yeah, he did end up saying that he was sorry that I had to go through that because then he told me a story about what he had to go through as a child with a man trying something on him.

Regina Sayer 14:14

Wow.

Michelle Nermerich 14:14

Which I didn't know about either. It wasn't until maybe about five, six years ago he started discussing what happened to him as a child.

Regina Sayer 14:24

And somebody in the family with him?

Michelle Nermerich 14:26

No, it was a gentleman he was working for.

Regina Sayer 14:30

Oh, gosh. Okay. It's so prevalent and nobody talks about it, is the problem.

Michelle Nermerich 14:35

No, especially when it comes to men. That's why I was so surprised when my dad told me about it. And now with his dementia, he's talking even more about stuff that happened to him as a child. And that cycle of ancestral trauma, it's showing it to me now because a lot of the stuff he's telling me is similar stuff that I have gone through in my life.

Regina Sayer 14:57

Okay. Well, we'll get into that a bit later. But that's that's quite wow, that's a bit shocking to hear that later in life that your dad, that your own father, was molested.

Michelle Nermerich 15:07

Yes.

Regina Sayer 15:08

Okay.

Creativity, graphic design and the car accident that changed everything

Regina Sayer 15:09

So let's go back into your career um path because you actually started your career path at the age 10 or 11 when you picked up a Microsoft paintbrush.

Michelle Nermerich 15:20

Yes.

Regina Sayer 15:21

Okay, so talk about that path.

Michelle Nermerich 15:23

Well, I've always been very artsy um and creative. And I told my parents at 10, 11 years old that I wanted to do design work on a computer. This is going back to 1988, where computers back then were quite barbaric still. And the only way you could get a mouse to do graphics was getting Microsoft Paintbrush, which is now Microsoft Paint. And that back then was like the top-of-the-line graphics program. So my parents, they always encouraged my dreams, except for me wanting to be a hairdresser because they said there was really no money on, but they encouraged my artsy side always. So yeah, I got my first graphics program in 1988 at the age of 10 years old. And that was my Christmas gift. And I never looked back. To this day, I don't do it full-time anymore just because of an injury that I had, but I still do it for my business. I do it for certain friends and family.

Regina Sayer 16:25

Not with paintbrush, though.

Michelle Nermerich 16:27

Not with paintbrush, with Photoshop, Illustrator. And I'm still old school. I still use page layout program, which is called Quark Express. Oh, most people would use InDesign from Adobe.

Regina Sayer 16:41

I didn't think Quark Express was still around.

Michelle Nermerich 16:44

It is.

Regina Sayer 16:45

Maybe unsupported.

Michelle Nermerich 16:46

No, actually, they're still coming up with new versions.

Regina Sayer 16:49

Wow, okay. That's interesting.

Michelle Nermerich 16:52

Yes, I'm just a creature of habit. Yeah.

Regina Sayer 16:56

So you went to university for graphic design?

Michelle Nermerich 17:00

College in Canada.

Regina Sayer 17:01

College. So, okay. So we always have this discrepancy between what is college and what is university, because in the UK it's one thing, in Canada, it's one thing, United States is one thing, and in Europe it's another.

Michelle Nermerich 17:12

So college is more like trades, like graphics, artsy stuff, photography, nursing. Depending on what level of nursing you do, there's one level that's at college level and one at university. So university is more for doctors, lawyers. So university is considered higher education than college.

Regina Sayer 17:34

So you did college and you got a design degree. Okay. Then you actually developed allergies and had to change. Is that correct?

Michelle Nermerich 17:44

That was for when I became an aesthetician.

Regina Sayer 17:47

All right. All right.

Michelle Nermerich 17:48

The reason I stopped being a graphic designer or graphic artist was because I got in a bad car accident where I had to get two bones and a muscle removed.

Regina Sayer 17:58

Where are these bones and muscles located that you had removed?

Michelle Nermerich 18:03

They removed my first cervical rib, which is underneath the collarbone. I was lucky enough to be born with an extra cervical rib. And then they removed my scaline muscle that is attached to the first cervical rib and goes up. That took me a couple years to recover from and get my full arm range back. The doctors pretty much said with the surgery, I had a 25% chance of getting better. And I just looked at the surgeon. I'm like, I'm 25 years old. I'm gonna take my 25% chance of getting better because right now my arm was blue and just hanging limp and not moving. And even the surgeon was like, Yeah, you can't get worse. So I took the 25% chance of getting better and 75% chance of getting worse. And it worked out because now I'm doing stuff that they said even with the surgery I would never be able to do when it comes to acrobatics and athletics. And how did you heal that? I went to physiotherapy for a year and a half. I did a lot of strength training. At the time, I was living with my ex-husband. So the spirituality thing wasn't into play yet, but I was really deep into aromatherapy and making a lot of my own pain-relieving oils and creams. I've never done well with medication. They wanted to put me on Percocets and OxyContins, and I don't know actually how people can get addicted to that stuff because I just felt gross, you could say, on it.

Regina Sayer 19:44

What is Percocet and oxytoxin? What is that?

Michelle Nermerich 19:47

Percocet is a type of morphine, and OxyContin is what you hear so many people in Canada getting highly addicted to. I don't know in what family it's in, but morphine would make me vomit, and OxyContins would make me sweat, and just I don't know, it just wasn't a good feeling. So I started doing my own stuff. I would just take Advil for pain management at the time and make my own lotion. At that time, it just wasn't oil that I would make with sesame seed and black pepper and ginger essential oil for pain relief. Twenty-some years later, it's come highly involved into an arnica butter cream that I make for pain management.

Regina Sayer 20:31

I was just thinking, is that arnica?

Michelle Nermerich 20:33

Back then, you actually nobody ever talked about arnica butter. Sesame seed was the anti-inflammatory of choice back then. Now it's all arnica butter. But the black pepper and ginger mixing in them together is wonders.

Regina Sayer 20:51

And how

Aromatherapy, iridology and early interest in natural healing

Regina Sayer 20:52

did you learn about aromatherapy? What turned you onto that and why did you go to the room?

Michelle Nermerich 20:56

When I was 18, I just developed an interest in it. I went to this, I don't know, I guess it would be a spiritual herbalistic store, and I found these little bottles of essential oil. I'm like, I like the smell of them. And then they had a book on it, and I picked up the book as well. I'm like, oh my God, you can heal stuff with it. Now I've always been into natural healing because as a child, my parents took me to an iridologist. Do you know what that is?

Regina Sayer 21:24

It's to do with the eyes.

Michelle Nermerich 21:25

Yeah, where they look in your eye because I had bad childhood asthma, and the iridologist actually helped clear that up for me.

Regina Sayer 21:33

Do you know? I'd have to tell you this. I was just reading, oh, this is so weird how things connect in, huh? Because I was just reading something because of another guest. This person does work with ancestral trauma, and she does iridology to do with ancestral trauma.

Michelle Nermerich 21:51

I do know that can be done.

Regina Sayer 21:53

Yeah, it's amazing. And she's written all these books and and yeah, she does that specifically. It's amazing what you can learn from the eyes.

Michelle Nermerich 22:03

I know. Like, I didn't tell her anything about me. I didn't tell her about my childhood, asthma, nothing. And she just looked in my eyes and knew right away that I had asthma. And she's like, it's coming because there's a curvature in your spine. So she's like, I recommend you go see a chiropractor. She also gave me some herb supplements to take. I remember one of them was Hawthorne for the goop that would develop in my throat from the coming up, the mucus from the lungs coming up. And she made me change my diet. I could have no milk products for six months, strictly fish and chicken based, no red meats. And within six months to a year, my asthma cleared up. My asthma was to the point where every three months I was in the hospital. That's how bad it was. Yeah. So I think that's part of the reason I ended up getting into aromatherapy at 18 because that always stuck with me. How some doctors couldn't help me out, but this iridologist who looked in my things was able to clear something a doctor couldn't.

Regina Sayer 23:14

Well, that's amazing that your your parents actually took you to somebody like that.

Michelle Nermerich 23:18

That's the one thing. They've always been a little bit into the alternative. Even though they were strict Catholic, they were very much into let's not resort on pharmaceuticals. Let's try an alternative.

Regina Sayer 23:31

So after you actually did what the iridologist told you and you changed your eating habits, did you come back to those eating habits?

Michelle Nermerich 23:39

I did actually, and my asthma never returned. Wow, that's amazing. I don't drink milk. I did start drinking milk again for a long time. I just noticed it gave me leaky gut syndrome every time I was drinking milk. Meaning that when I would go to the bathroom, my foods would come out in almost solid form still. My body wasn't digesting it. So about almost four years ago now, I decided to stop drinking milk altogether. And it's been one of the best things that I've done for my health. I still eat cheese. I still have yogurt. I just drink milk or certain types of ice cream. Like I prefer vegan ice cream over dairy ice cream. Now, if they're homemade, I had this one homemade ice cream with raw milk. And I had my gut had no problems with it. But certain dairy ice creams, like you can hear my stomach rumbling from like a mile away because of the digestive issues I'm getting from the ice cream. I don't know it's if how they're pasteurizing the milk or what it is.

Regina Sayer 24:54

I have no idea because it's weird that you would get it just with the milk and then not with the yogurt. But maybe that's something to do with it.

Michelle Nermerich 25:01

But yogurt, it has different bacteria cultures in it. And I remember the iridologist even saying that because yogurt was one of the things I could still have. Certain cheeses I was still allowed to have.

Regina Sayer 25:13

So your in your interest in holistic started there?

Michelle Nermerich 25:17

It started there, yes. And I was about, I'd say seven, eight years old at the time.

Regina Sayer 25:24

Wow, okay. And aside from aromatherapy, did you explore anything else? Because you walked into a store that had aromatherapy, so there must have been other stuff.

Michelle Nermerich 25:33

I did get into energy healing. I just was reading books on it. I wasn't professionally trained in it. And I would just try starting just doing it on myself. Like if I'd have a toothache, I just would channel energy to where my tooth was sore. And I'd notice I wake up the next day, I'm like, my tooth isn't sore anymore. So, and I just started reading a little bit about it. But yes, at that time it was mainly aromatherapy. I was getting into it until I met my ex-husband.

Regina Sayer 26:05

Right. I was just getting back to that part. So when did you meet your your ex-husband? Was it shortly after you finished design school?

Michelle Nermerich 26:12

Yeah,

Love bombing, domestic abuse and the long process of leaving

Michelle Nermerich 26:13

so I finished design school in '98. And I met my ex-husband two years later in 2000. We met actually, it was a week after New Year's Eve. We knew of each other. We weren't formally introduced though.

Regina Sayer 26:29

And you thought it was the the perfect ... the perfect person?

Michelle Nermerich 26:32

I thought he was the best guy ever. I've I've never had a real boyfriend, you could say. He was my first real boyfriend. And at that time, I didn't know what love bombing was. Now I do, after a lot of counseling and therapy, after that 22-year relationship, he love bombed me right from day one. I thought it was the greatest thing ever because I never had a man telling me that he loved me. And he just went overboard on how much he said. After the first two weeks, he told me how much he was in love with me already, how I was the perfect person for him, how he can't even picture a life without me. And I'm just like, really? I'm making somebody feel like this. Like it just took me back that what I was thinking was love at that time, now thinking about it, was not love. It was a toxic love, you could say. Very toxic.

Regina Sayer 27:29

You were with him for 22 years.

Michelle Nermerich 27:31

22 years. We met in January of 2000, and I ended up it ended up with me calling the police on him in November of 2021.

Regina Sayer 27:44

So what happened over all these years with that marriage?

Michelle Nermerich 27:48

Because I didn't know any better, like what narcissist was, what gaslighting was. Pretty much my counselor after I broke up with him told me all about it. And she's like, everything you've described, what you went through in your relationship, sounds like he was a narcissist and a gaslighter. He would make me feel bad for doing good things for him. He also was in this thing where I felt some days like his mother more than his wife or his partner. If I didn't cater to his every need, I was the bad one. It just went from 18 years. I thought we were 18 years happily together, not realizing the emotional abuse that was involved. Um yeah, so 18 years, and then all of a sudden he started drinking more heavily. I started noticing cocaine in the house. And that's when the physical abuse started on top of it. And that was the other part, which he did it once in 2018. I'm like, okay, he did it once. It was an accident. Nothing happened for another year. Then he did it again. Each time he would abuse me, it would be escalated, the abuse. Um, from a fractured hip to nearly the last time he abused me was in 2021 of July, where he nearly choked me to death. And he pretty much pushed me against the ground and started banging my head constantly against the floor. And I still didn't leave him at that point. It took for him to get very erratic again that November, where he tore up my driver's license. Well, actually, to this day, I don't know if he tore it up. It just disappeared. And he is like, I don't know what happened to it. He also tried to damage my car. So that morning I was gonna go up to my dad's house for visit. I'm like, Dad, I'm gonna be late coming to your house. My I have to get my driver's license renewed. My dad knew at this point that I was actually trying, I was coming up with an escape plan with my family doctor to leave him. So when I got up to get my driver's license done, they were like, What? Did you lose your license? I'm like, no, my husband took it on me and he won't, he either threw it out, destroyed it, or won't give it back. And they're like, Well, that's a criminal offense. And I also told them what he tried to do with my tires. And they told me, they highly, highly urged me to get a hold of what's called victim services here in Canada. So I called them up just to see what I can do. I had no intention of actually getting the police involved at this point, but because of what I had told them what happened since 2018, they're like, Because everything you've told us, we have to tell the police. And I'm like, okay, but what if I don't want you to? They're like, there is no if you don't want us to. It has to be done. So next thing I know, I'm at my dad's house with my dog, and there's three policemen at my desk, and they asked for witnesses to my injuries, and my dad obviously was one of them because he would see me bruised, but I would make excuses up for my bruises.

Regina Sayer 30:58

Oh, so he didn't know.

Michelle Nermerich 31:00

So he didn't know. The only person who knew was my closest girlfriend. She was the witness to my hip fracture because I went to go do a pedicure on her pretty much a week after it happened, and I was limping really badly, and it was summertime, so I had shorts on, and she saw the bruising up and down my leg. I think I even had bruises on my arm from him grabbing me. And she's like, You don't just fall and have bruises like that. Because I would just tell people, oh, I'm clumsy, I'm falling, I'm walking into stuff. And that's how I justified my bruisings. And so finally I confessed to her. I'm like, listen, my husband pushed me and she is like, you need to go to the doctor. She's like, my hip was swollen out. It was black. Like, I end up showing her the whole bruise down my hip. She's like, You're in so much pain. You shouldn't even be coming here and doing a service on me. I still didn't tell a doctor. I told my doctor that I fell, and that's how I got the injury. August September of 2021, I finally came clean to my doctor, and that's when we started coming up with an escape plan for me to leave my ex-husband. But before we had it in place, like I said, the police got involved because he just got so erratic.

Regina Sayer 32:20

Yeah, thankfully.

Michelle Nermerich 32:21

Yes.

Regina Sayer 32:22

Well, okay, so you keep talking about you kept going back to your doctor. So, you know, normally, and you're talking about like you're not talking about a therapist. You're talking about a doctor, doctor.

Michelle Nermerich 32:34

This was my family doctor at the time.

Regina Sayer 32:36

A medical doctor. Yeah.

Michelle Nermerich 32:37

Yes and she was the one who referred me to the counselor for going through abuse, which I was going through counseling while I was trying to leave him already.

Regina Sayer 32:47

Okay. It's just I'm I'm asking because, you know, it's not typical that you hear somebody say that their medical doctor is trying to help somebody plan an escape route from, you know, her husband that beats her up.

Michelle Nermerich 32:57

No, that was the counselor, but the family doctor was the one who when I told her about the abuse that was going on, she put me to this counselor that deals with abused women. And in Canada, it's a free service if you're going through that.

Regina Sayer 33:13

So you were already seeing the counselor before the arrest happened.

Michelle Nermerich 33:17

Before the arrest happened, yeah.

Regina Sayer 33:20

Okay. And your husband had no idea you were doing these counseling sessions.

Michelle Nermerich 33:24

He had no idea that I was seeing a counselor, that I was coming up with an escape plan, that I already saw legal advice.

Regina Sayer 33:31

Gosh, all right. So it took you four years before you actually got out the door from the first incident.

Michelle Nermerich 33:38

Yes. Because he only did it once a year. So it's called the grace period. He would give me this grace period where he would be so loving and caring again. You think everything is fine, and then boom, he does it again. And it almost turned out like clockwork, almost a year exactly to the date.

Regina Sayer 33:59

And any idea why it was it was it a specific date that triggered him or something?

Michelle Nermerich 34:04

Or no, because there was like a two, three month time span where it would range in between. But typically, yes. One time it just blew my mind it was because I left a streak on a window when I was cleaning. You didn't clean that window properly. And I'm just like, I'm sorry, I left a little streak on the window. Another time was he'd asked me to go on a play date because he's like, I know you don't like when I drink. Why don't you go with the one dog across the street on a play date? And I'm like, okay, that sounds like a good idea. And I'm like, I didn't I lost track of time. It was like two, three hours I was gone for. And when I came home, he just threw me around like a ragdoll for leaving him for so long. On his own advice. Yes. And he was brought up with an abusive stepdad. And this is the one thing that always stuck to me. He always promised me he would never turn out to be the monster that his stepdad was. The stories he told me what his stepdad did to his mother, he turned out to be that exact same person.

Regina Sayer 35:04

Unfortunately, he never broke the cycle for himself.

Michelle Nermerich 35:08

No. And now, like, people are like, oh, you probably wish him all this stuff. I'm like, actually, no, the only thing I wish, I've forgiven him for everything he's done, or else I wouldn't be where I am today in the person I am today. The thing I hope is that he gets the help he needs.

Regina Sayer 35:23

Yeah, and that's something that you find often is that you've got these cycles that are happening and people don't know when they're happening. I mean, like you said with your father, you know? Yes. These generational things that are happening, these cyclical things that are happening. And if somebody doesn't break the cycle, it keeps happening.

Michelle Nermerich 35:40

Exactly.

Fibromyalgia, medication, brain fog and learning to listen to the body

Regina Sayer 35:42

You were actually saying that you were seeing a doctor because you also later discovered, so you had this issue with your cervical rib.

Michelle Nermerich 35:52

Yes.

Regina Sayer 35:53

So you were working on that. And how long did it take for you to actually get your arm in working order again?

Michelle Nermerich 36:00

I've actually always struggled with issues with that arm up until about, I would say, three, four years ago, when I also nicked my fibromyalgia. And that the fibromyalgia started when the abuse started. And it might have started even a year before. It's hard to determine because the pain came on so gradually. And I just thought, okay, I'm in my 30s. Maybe it's just an age thing, this pain, until I was walking with a cane. And I'm like, this is not normal for a 30-some-year-old woman to be walking with a cane. And it got even worse when I had a boss in 2019 also sexual harassment in the workplace.

Regina Sayer 36:48

Okay. And you're still doing design at this point?

Michelle Nermerich 36:51

I was doing yes, design work and back-end web work.

Regina Sayer 36:56

And how long did it take before you actually had a diagnosis? Because I know that's something that people say goes undetected for a while.

Michelle Nermerich 37:03

I would say it took them, I would say about two years. They had me on so many medications. Once they did diagnose me, I was taking nine gabapentin a day.

Regina Sayer 37:15

When you say the name of the drug, you'll have to say what it is because we don't know.

Michelle Nermerich 37:17

So gabapentin is a pill that they use for people who are epileptic. Okay. It's a horrible drug. Now that I'm off of it, like I was living in like this dream world, and I think that's another reason why I let the abuse happen because I wasn't clear-minded. I was like in a whole different just out there. Like I was high all the time on pharmaceutical drugs. So I was on that pill, and then I can't remember the names of the other pills, but I was on two other pills. I was taking 12 to 13 pills a day, if I remember correctly, just so I could function without having pain. Once I left my ex-husband, I slowly started weaning myself off of all the medication. Because I'm like, I'm by myself now. I have nobody to rely on. My mother had passed away in 2016. So I had no mom to go to anymore. I had my dad who was starting to show some signs of his deterioration. So I had nobody to help me with making life decisions. So I just slowly started getting off of it and I started researching herbal stuff that helped with energy, help with brain fog, natural stuff to help with pain. And between taking natural supplements, getting into sound healing, doing tuning fork therapy on myself, breastwork, meditation, I'm virtually now pain-free.

Regina Sayer 38:52

And did you find a naturopath that helped you understand what all these different things were, or you just researched it yourself?

Michelle Nermerich 38:58

I just researched it myself. I've always been that before my ex-husband, even I've always been that type of person. I would just always do my own research. One of my best friends has actually become Shilajit . It looks like a tar substance that I mix in my water every morning that I take. It gives me an energy boost like caffeine would without the crash of caffeine. The brain fog part, like even I got rid of the pain before I started taking the Shilajit. I still was suffering from major brain fog. That was the one thing that I couldn't get over. Soon as I started taking the Shilajit, next thing I know, I'm taking course after course after course because my brain's just on fire now.

Regina Sayer 39:43

Your brain is cleared up, you want to know.

Michelle Nermerich 39:45

Yes. And then I also started taking methylene blue.

Regina Sayer 39:48

Now I have heard of that before. What is that?

Michelle Nermerich 39:51

Methylene blue, okay, I might be quoting the date wrong, but it's been around since 1876, I believe. It started out as a dye that they used in surgeries. It's also a treatment for malaria. It helps with the malaria parasite breaking down. I started taking that. That was actually a more recent one, not last New Year's, but the New Year's before. I got really sick just with a chest cold, and a Reiki master that I was talking to at the time was telling me about how he takes methylene blue. According to me, psych, it helps build up your immune system a bit better. And I started taking that, and I even noticed my brain function getting even better after taking that. And then I did more and more research on methylene blue. They're even doing studies now for people with dementia. It's not making that the dementia gets better, but it's helping it stop the dementia in its tracks. So I was thinking of putting my dad on that because he has dementia. Unfortunately, he's on another pill where it interacts with. So I can't take him off that pill because that's what helps him sleep at night. Okay. Where if you take methylene blue too late in the afternoon, I don't know if everybody is like this, but myself, because there is a bit of an upper to it. If I take it past 2 p.m., I won't sleep at night. But I have noticed a difference also in the methylene blue. When I don't forget to take it, my joints tend to be more stiff. There's just little changes I noticed when I was taking it. And when I take, because once in a while I will take a break, just so my system doesn't get too used to all this stuff. I will take a break for anywhere from two weeks to a month, and I'll alternate between taking a break with the Shilajit and then with the methylene blue. So I'm always taking one because I don't want that fibromyalgia brain fog coming back.

Regina Sayer 41:50

Yeah. And so when you were married, you had this as well. And how was your husband treating your disease?

Michelle Nermerich 41:58

In the beginning, he was a bit supportive with it. And as time went on, sometimes he would say, Oh, it's psychosomatic. Then he would tell me, Oh, it's because you're not exercising enough. So I'd start exercising, and then he's like, Well, who are you trying to impress with losing this weight and exercising and looking good? I'm like, I'm trying to make myself healthier. I'm not impressing anybody. So every time I would try to get myself healthier, he would cut me down. And at one point, I actually, between my ex-husband and my boss, who was sexually harassing me, I let myself go really badly because I didn't want that attention from anybody. I

Movement, strength training, yoga and rebuilding physical confidence

Michelle Nermerich 42:40

ended up gaining a lot of weight, between 160 and 170 pounds. So I was quite overweight. I'm five foot eight. Right now I'm at about 135 pounds, which is a good weight for me. And that's with weight lifting. So a lot of my weight is muscle weight. And weightlifting is one of the best things that I've done for my body, especially missing those two bones and a muscle on this side. Because I still do go for what's called nerve block injections. Since I started weightlifting, though, I've been able to spread my nerve block injection from every six weeks to every 12 weeks. My pain specialist says if I keep going the way I am, I may no longer need them if I keep building more and more strength. And I do remember the doctors telling me that at that time, back in 2003, when I had my car accident, that I need to do more strength training. The only thing was my ex-husband always would put me down every time I try, and I would get better looking and in better shape.

Regina Sayer 43:43

And so, because of that, you're actually prolonged the healing of your arm.

Michelle Nermerich 43:48

I did, yes. The whole time I was with him, my arm would go like that, and then it would get stuck in that position. I couldn't get it up like that without any pain. And notice what I just Did okay.

Regina Sayer 44:01

So for listeners, because if you're not watching the video, obviously you can't see that. She's actually put her arm up halfway, and then to show that's how far she could get it, and then she's put her arm completely straight up, as if up in her next to her head.

Michelle Nermerich 44:15

Yes, and now I'm to the point where I get bored with traditional fitness. So I've done stuff that doctors told me would never be possible just because of missing bones and muscles. I like to call it pole fitness because people get the wrong idea when I say pole dancing. Pretty much it's acrobatics on a pole where I flip myself upside down on a pole and do different poses. What I do, there's no real dance involved. It's just using the pole as an acrobatic, or I also do aerial hoop. So you need a lot of upper body strength and your muscles to do that. And I've also gotten into aerial yoga.

Regina Sayer 44:58

Yeah, but the pole dancing, I had another guest. She's got ankylosing spondylitis. And she also does pole dancing to manage that because she's got that and the fry I can't say this word.

Michelle Nermerich 45:09

Fibromyalgia?

Regina Sayer 45:11

Yeah. And she has them both. And so one of the things she does is she does that. And I think I told you she does belly dancing as well.

Michelle Nermerich 45:17

Well, I had just got into belly dancing myself. I've had my first lesson in it.

Regina Sayer 45:23

Yeah. So there must be something in the movement that helps with the bones and the spine.

Michelle Nermerich 45:27

There is a lot, especially in dance movement, that helps. Like, because you're keeping your body moving at all times. And the way I what I tell people, find a fitness, it doesn't have to be traditional going to a gym, lifting weights, running. Find something that makes you happy, no matter what it is. Like I never thought doing pole would make me as happy. Being upside down, actually, makes me happy as a fitness exercise. Because when I look at pictures that people have taken from me doing my fitness stuff, all of them I'm upside down. Either in my aerial yoga swing that I have, I'm hanging upside down because it does do wonders for your back hanging upside down in one of those yoga swings where your lower back is suspended by the strap and it's like it does traction where it pulls your spine. If I don't do that after every workout, I've noticed the workouts I forget to do that on, I'll have a little bit of lower back pain when I wake up, or I'll wake up to lower back pain while I'm sleeping. But if I am in that for about two to five minutes every day, I have no back pain.

Regina Sayer 46:34

So it's a nicer way of suspending yourself rather than, you know, these ones where these boards of people lie on.

Michelle Nermerich 46:40

Yes, I prefer it better because I can I can twist my body in there so I can stretch at the same time. I found this one stretch because my pole is pretty much right behind it. So I can lean, I'll grab, and I'll get like this really good arm stretch. So I'll be upside down and holding onto my pole and have my other arm out back, and I'll be getting this amazing stretch to my body.

Regina Sayer 47:07

And have you been doing yoga as well?

Michelle Nermerich 47:11

I started doing yoga in the last month I was with my ex-husband because I started going to physiotherapy for my fibromyalgia. So I started doing yoga then, and then I started doing online yoga courses, and I came across this one course that I was taking called Kundalini Yoga, and I fell in love with it. It's a combination of Hatha yoga, meditation, chanting, and breathwork. And I fell in love with it so much that starting September 1st, I'm in Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training. And it fits into everything I do because I got my meditation teacher coaching certificate about a year and a half ago. I got my breathwork practitioner certificate. And like I said, I've been doing yoga now for four years. I was doing yoga prior to that too. But once again, my ex-husband put a stop to it. So I wasn't able to do it. Where at the spa I was working at, they had opened a yoga studio. If I was gone too long of periods of time, I would be yelled at really badly when I came home after my yoga. So I just stopped doing it because I didn't want to have the fights. Then that was probably in about 2013 I started doing yoga through my work.

Regina Sayer 48:35

So yeah, you just said one key thing that I want to come back to. You said I worked in a spa. So how did you suddenly go from working in design to working in a spa? What happened?

From graphic design to aesthetician work, allergies and another career shift

Michelle Nermerich 48:45

After my car accident, the doctors told me I wasn't allowed to use a mouse more than four hours a day because it would cut off the circulation from missing that stuff and the circulation issue I already had for my car accident said that I wouldn't be able to be sitting on a computer eight plus hours a day anymore. I needed a job where I had more body movement, and I went to what's called vocational rehab after a car accident to find what my body can do and what I like doing.

Regina Sayer 49:17

Wow, what is that? Is that a Canadian thing? I've never heard of that.

Michelle Nermerich 49:21

Um, it was part of my car insurance. They sent me to it. It's a thing when people have injuries and they can't go back to their job, they send you to. So they tested what my body could do, and then I had to fill out this paperwork to see what my interests were, and aesthetician came up. The end of 2005, I went back to school to be an aesthetician, and by 2006, I was an aesthetician, and I did that well, full time. I still do it uh for seniors, like I'll do manicures and pedicures, stuff that I can do that I'm not allergic to. So what happened was I became allergic to being an aesthetician, you could say, because of shellac nails. I don't know if you know what that is.

Regina Sayer 50:07

No, no, what is that?

Michelle Nermerich 50:08

It's a nail polish that sticks on your nails. It's like a gel almost. So I was a gel nail technician as well, and I pretty much became allergic to doing nails. It would give me third-degree burns on my body. Um, when I went for my allergy testing, it they put it on my back, the shellac, and it almost burnt a hole through to my bone within 12 hours of having it on my body. They wanted to have it on me for 48 hours, and I had to call the doctor that same day of him putting it on me, saying something is not right. Like I'm in so much pain. One of the girls put pulled the patches where it was working off of me, and she is like, You have a hole. You have a burn hole in your skin. So I went to the allergist, so he put it on, I think it was like at 7:30 in the morning. So it wasn't even 12 hours. By 5:30, I was back in his office and they had to remove it, and it was going down my spine, and it burnt a hole where he's like, I could start seeing your bone coming through.

Regina Sayer 51:11

Oh my gosh.

Michelle Nermerich 51:12

That's how severe my allergy was.

Regina Sayer 51:15

What does that mean for people who are wearing nails like that?

Michelle Nermerich 51:19

I don't know. I do remember working as an aesthetician, there was a girl, she would refuse to give them up, and she had such bad eczema around her nail beds. And I was telling her, I'm like, you you have to stop. Because that's how it started with me with slight eczema. And it progressed from there. I'm like, you need to stop because you will eventually, and that's what happened to me. I lost fingernails because of it. But she refused to listen. And I told my boss, I'm like, I'm not gonna do her nails anymore. I don't want her seeing going through the route what I went through. And this has happened to me a couple times when I didn't believe in doing something on clients. Like I had a client come in with a nail fungus. I'm like, I'm not putting fake nails on her. Even my boss at that time, she is like, no, we're not gonna do that. She's like, well, I'm gonna go to a spa where they will do it. And then at this other spa that I was at with the girl where I said, no, I don't want to do her nails because she has a health condition. My boss, she is like, Well, I'll put a different nail tech on her, one who will do it. I guess I cared too much about people's health. And it wasn't about the money, it was about the people's health for me. Where with my boss, it was about the money. She's losing a client if I don't do them.

Regina Sayer 52:27

Yeah, exactly. And what about the people, the other technicians, did they have experience problems as well? I mean,

Michelle Nermerich 52:34

no. This is what the allergist told me. Some aestheticians just react badly. A lot of the girls I worked with were newer aestheticians, where I had been doing it for already 10 years. So for 10 years, these chemicals had been building up in my system where they were only a year or two into it.

Regina Sayer 52:52

So, how did you actually purge these chemicals out of your system?

Michelle Nermerich 52:55

Stopping to work with them. So, pretty much I had to give up being an aesthetician working in a spa. And yeah, I pretty much quit in 2018. And that's when I decided I'm gonna try again at 2019 working for the cell phone company where I had the boss who sexually harassed me, where I was doing backhand work because my shoulder had improved so much. And I was also helping at the front desk, so I wasn't doing full computer work at that time.

Regina Sayer 53:24

I'm not even sure I want to ask what your husband is is saying to you all this time about you actually being an aesthetician, you know?

Michelle Nermerich 53:31

He was hot and cold with it. So he loved it because he loved when I got tips and I brought cash money home because it gave him more drinking money. And he would actually push me, like I was working seven days a week because he wouldn't want to work. He just would want to stay at home and drink. Um, so even on my days off, I'd find clients on the side to do. And as soon as I come home, oh, how much money did you make? And I pretty much would have to hand him my money. We had a shared bank account, and he made sure of that right from pretty much six months after we moved in together, that we had a joint bank account. Our money was our money together. And then sometimes I want to come home and buy myself something and there was no money. And he's like, Well, you should have used it up sooner. I'm like, with what time? I work all the time. I lived on hand-me-down clothing for my sister probably for a good six, seven years because I couldn't afford to buy my own clothing.

Regina Sayer 54:25

And were you ever talking about these strange things that he was doing with your friends?

Michelle Nermerich 54:30

I thought it was all normal. Yeah, because I was groomed into it from the time I was 20 and a half years old till I was in my 40s. So to me, I didn't know any better. And yes, my parents were good parents, but they were also very controlling at the same time of what I did and who I hung out with. So controlling was always part of my life. So when I went from controlling parents to a controlling husband, I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think of needing boundaries, having alone time. Like to me, that just wasn't normal, you could say.

Regina Sayer 55:11

When you started seeing the counselor and she started telling you, okay, these are all signs of a narcissist, and this is an abusive relationship you're in, and this is not normal. Did you have a hard time believing her?

Michelle Nermerich 55:23

No, because by that point I knew how toxic it was, like deep down, because there were days where I would pray to God that I wouldn't wake up. I just was so down and out. Like I remember being in my bedroom, like just going, God, please, please, just don't let me. If I have to wake up to this, I don't want to wake up anymore. That's to the point I got, I just didn't want to wake up anymore. And there was a couple times where he pushed me so hard that I felt like swallowing all my pills. I felt like taking a knife to myself. But he wouldn't let me. He saw that point and he's like, No, you can't do that. But now I'm thinking going back, I'm like, yeah, he probably just didn't want that because then he'd lose his income.

Regina Sayer 56:06

Okay, so you finally got out of that.

Michelle Nermerich 56:08

I

PTSD, counselling, Reiki, breathwork and sound healing

Michelle Nermerich 56:09

finally got out of that and got help.

Regina Sayer 56:12

Yeah, so how long did your counseling continue afterwards?

Michelle Nermerich 56:16

Because she didn't she didn't want to pill me up or anything. She would do EMDR talk therapy, which was excellent. She even was the one who told me about meditation. So I was actually in and out with counseling just because I had a lot of PTSD, like from the physical abuse. So I saw her for I would say a year, and then I felt like everything was getting better, and then I had to meet my husband ex-husband in virtual court, and then the PTSD came back again. Like I'd have flashbacks. I'd go in my living room, and I all I'd see was me on the ground being choked and my head smashed to the ground. I saw her on and off for two years, you could say. And then I started taking courses myself in meditation. I took spiritual life coaching courses. I started taking all these courses just for myself. I got into Reiki, which, like I said, the energy healing has always been a part of me since I can remember like curing my own toothaches. So I just dove deeper and deeper into the whole spiritual realm and sound healing. Sound healing has been wonders for me. Like tuning forks are my best friend.

Regina Sayer 57:33

Now, how did you discover sound healing?

Michelle Nermerich 57:36

Through one of my really good friends, who was actually my client at the time as an aesthetician, um, he lived with me for a short while, and he turned me on to sound bolds. And I just fell in love with sound bowls. Then I started getting books on sound healing, and I got my first tuning fork, and I just tried it where I would have little bits of pain. And I'm like, oh, this is so nice. And I noticed I had swelling in my one knee that I had injured years ago, slipping on black ice and falling on concrete. Um, so once in a while that knee swelled up, and I put a tuning fork to it, and the next day the swelling was gone. Then I got into sound bowls. I bought my first set of sound bowls back in 2023 now.

Regina Sayer 58:26

The crystal or Tibetan ones?

Michelle Nermerich 58:28

Crystal sound bowls. I picked it up off of Amazon. And then I found this course online that introduced me to sound bowls. And two years later, it took me two years, and I finally got my master's in sound healing.

Regina Sayer 58:44

And what exactly is a master's in sound healing? I've not heard of it.

Michelle Nermerich 58:47

Master's in sound healing. Pretty much I do sound baths for clients. I'm actually holding my first group sound bath in September, which I'm excited and nervous about at the same time. As of this point, I've only done it one-on-one or a very small group. I've never done a large group. This is going to be 12 plus people. So sound baths, depending on which sound bowls I use, like I do chakra sound baths. So I can do anything from like tuning your chakras to helping with pain management on depending on which sound bowls I'm hitting and what frequency I'm using. Like with the tuning forks, they're a lot more frequency-based. So depending on what area of the body that I'm working on with the tuning forks is what tuning forks I'm gonna pull out because each area of your body has a different frequency that it responds to, if that makes sense to you.

Regina Sayer 59:43

Yes, it does to me, yes.

Michelle Nermerich 59:45

Because my dad has dementia. I just bought a 40 hertz tuning fork. I've been doing a lot of research on it. It's supposed to be wonderful for dementia. And the one I was looking at came with what they're called footies. It came with three different kinds you could choose from. The one was just a massage footy to use for massaging. The other one was rose quartz, which is more for your heart chakra. And I'm like, it doesn't seem like that should work for the brain. So I got the amethyst, which is for your third eye and brain. So I end up going with the amethyst footy. When you use a tuning fork, if you don't have a footy, you can still use them. It just feels nicer with a footy on the skin. It's not quite as harsh feeling. It's more like of a rounded surface. Yeah. I was looking for a clear quartz one, like I have on my other tuning forks. I got this whole kit of 10 footies with different crystals on them. And these are ball crystals that roll, so you can use it in massage. Like I even use I want to do facials on people now. I use tuning forks in my facials, and it does help for stimulation of your muscles and your collagen reproduction. So I still do aesthetics, I just do it more holistic now. Like I can do a non-surgical facelift with tuning forks and crystals. Even doing Reiki on the face has anti-aging properties to it. A lot of people don't realize that. Like, I'm trying to come up with this customized sound healing Reiki facial right now. That's all with my own homemade products.

Regina Sayer 1:01:23

Yeah, this is just a little side tangent because in Singapore I worked with a lot of people who did sound healing. There was this one guy, and he travels all over the place, goes to Egypt, Japan, wherever. And he also does light language as well. But he has absolutely stunning crystal bowls that have like they're amethyst or rose or they're infused with sapphire.

Michelle Nermerich 1:01:47

Yes, I've seen those bowls.

Regina Sayer 1:01:50

They cost an arm and a leg.

Michelle Nermerich 1:01:51

That's why I would have those kind in a heartbeat. Actually, my next goal, but it's so expensive. Have you seen the either crystal bowls or Tibetan bowls that you can lie in?

Regina Sayer 1:02:04

No, I have not seen those, but I mean I've seen some really big bowls, but not ones you can lie in.

Michelle Nermerich 1:02:09

There's this one crystal bowl. You ex you sit in it and in the bottom, and then they put a crystal bowl on top of you. So you're like in this bowl cocoon, and they put the vibration off the bottom and the top one. And just today I saw a Tibetan bowl where it's big enough that you can lie in. It's lined with pillows and you can set off the vibration. I did get a Tibetan standing bowl for my clients, and oh my god, I love it. I pretty much have them stand in it, and then I have my crystal pyramid on top, and you can tell when their body's out of sync. When before I start a session, I've done this for so many of my clients now. I'll put them in the bowl and I put the pyramid over top, and it's you can hear the disharmony. After I'm done a session, I'll do it again, and you can hear all of a sudden the harmony going from the Tibetan bowl to the crystal pyramid on top. It's amazing how you can see that before and after.

Regina Sayer 1:03:07

Another sound healer that I know who's been on the show does a lot of things with all sorts of different types of instruments to do sound healing. This might be something you you'd be interested in. As a community service, she goes to like because in Singapore they have like a lot of community centers for old folks where they come and and they do activities there. And she goes there and she does sound healing for them and they love it. And she does sound healing and she does like chair yoga to get them moving because a lot of them.

Michelle Nermerich 1:03:40

I do that with my dad. The only reason I don't do it for people is because I don't have right now a yoga certificate. I just am trained myself. So I will do it for my father. I will do chair yoga with him. I also because I do have a pole in my house, which is perfect for a senior citizen to hold on to for balance. I'll do exercises with him for balance using my pool where he holds on. He'll like lift his leg up and down, up and so it's a type of yoga, but assisted where you're holding on to something. Because he is very mobile still. He's just losing his flexibility. He still walks five kilometers a day with me. Oh wow, that's quite good. He still runs 100 meters. Unfortunately, it's just the brain is going and I'm trying so many different methods now. Like I said, I even got a tuning fork just for him.

Regina Sayer 1:04:34

What

Family perception, neurohealth, baby steps and holistic healing practices

Regina Sayer 1:04:35

does he think about all these things that you're doing?

Michelle Nermerich 1:04:37

He keeps telling my sister that I'm saving people's lives. I'm not sure if he's completely grasping it, but he keeps telling people how good work I do for other people with helping them out mentally because of my neurohealth practitioner background, also, which is pretty much spiritual coaching, just more scientific based. They go so hand in hand.

Regina Sayer 1:05:00

What is this thing that you just mentioned? You're a neuro health practitioner. What is that?

Michelle Nermerich 1:05:05

Pretty much I had to study about neuroplasticity of the brain, like how your synapsis works, your neurotransmitters, how it helps with like your neuroplasticity. So, like baby steps, how you can improve your brain with baby steps. So, what I tell people who ask me how I got through with fibromyalgia, I'm like, well, I would take baby steps. I would go for a 10-minute walk with my cane and two minutes without my cane in the beginning. And then I would gradually use my cane less and less. And then I got to the point where I could walk 10 minutes without a cane. Next day I would add a minute to it. Every day I would add 30 seconds to a minute to my walk. And that's pretty much what neuroplasticity is is baby steps. And that's one of the main ways I overcame. Also, my fibromyalgia, just adding just minute little fractions. So, neurohealth practitioner is pretty much teaching people in baby steps anything from your mindset to your physical health and how your physical health and mental health go hand in hand. If you're not taking care of your physical health, your mental health will go downhill. And that was another course I took for myself, but it helps me also help other people, like if they're not spiritually inclined, helping them more scientifically describe how to overcome things.

Regina Sayer 1:06:36

You just said something key there that you're clear of your fibromyalgia.

Michelle Nermerich 1:06:41

Well, they say you never get rid of it. It's called in remission because I could have a flare-up, which winter time will cause me, depending on how severe our Canadian winters are, because they really range. Last year was a very extreme cold, snowy winter. The year before that, we didn't get under zero degrees Celsius. And last year we had minus 31. So again, we have extremes. And I never know. So, like last winter, because of how extreme it was, my fybro did act up a little bit, but it wasn't where I was walking with a cane or anything. I just felt stiff. I felt a little lethargic, and I just listened to my body, and I will do rest and relaxation on those days. But yeah, the year before, I did not have one fibromyalgia flare up because we never hit under zero degrees that year. I even remember going for a walk in February with my dad at the park and they had to mow the lawn, which is unheard of in Canada, mowing your lawn in January and February. But it had to be done that year because it was such a warm winter. I didn't have to pull out a shovel once that year or a snowblower.

Regina Sayer 1:07:52

So all of these practices, I mean, you have basically done everything to heal yourself.

Michelle Nermerich 1:07:58

I have.

Regina Sayer 1:07:59

First and foremost. And then you've now turning it outward to help other people.

Michelle Nermerich 1:08:03

Other people, yes.

Regina Sayer 1:08:04

As well as you're getting these certifications.

Michelle Nermerich 1:08:06

Yes. And I'm constantly learning new things, and it just keeps my brain going. And my clients like it too.

Regina Sayer 1:08:14

Yeah, because you are providing in-home aesthetic services for clients who are in their 80s and 90s.

Michelle Nermerich 1:08:20

Yes. They must love it. I have such a soft spot for our seniors and the stories they have to tell you. I'd love listening to their stories.

Regina Sayer 1:08:30

But you also, and we're just going to go into it a little bit because we're going to do a special episode on this. You have learned all sorts of different Reiki that I have never even heard of. But when I you were talking, I was like, what's that? No, I haven't heard of that. What's that?

Michelle Nermerich 1:08:47

Well, that's Kundalini Reiki, which encompasses six different forms of Reiki.

Regina Sayer 1:08:52

Okay. And so that's just a preview because we are going to do a very special episode that talks about all these different Reiki's.

Michelle Nermerich 1:09:00

There's more than that. I can only talk about what I know though, but I do know there's a lot more. There's, I think, 22 or 32 different forms of Reiki altogether. Like I do two forms. I do the kundalini Reiki and I do the traditional form Usui Reiki, which has to do with symbols. Where kundalini Reiki does not deal with symbols. You get your crystalline Reiki, your DNA Reiki, your past life Reiki, um, birth trauma Reiki. Did I mention DNA Reiki already? No, I did not. And then Kundalini Reiki.

Regina Sayer 1:09:34

Well, we will go into those in more detail the next time.

Michelle Nermerich 1:09:38

But I do have to admit, crystalline Reiki is the one I use the most in my treatments, because I'll just give you a little preview. It breaks up trauma in the body from injury or emotional traumas. It breaks up the you know when you have a knot? Yep. So if I do crystalline Reiki over that knot and then I massage over it, it's like the knot's gone. It breaks up the tension in there and the crystals. Because when you have a knot like that, it's formed of little crystals.

Regina Sayer 1:10:04

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Because when I go to my Rolfer and she's feeling around and she goes, Oh, I'm thinking, what is that? I feel that, you know? I feel these little

Michelle Nermerich 1:10:15

Some massage therapists will call it ropey.

Regina Sayer 1:10:18

She says she says it's ropey, but she says it's the little crystals that are in there. That's perfect though, because if it's crystals, then I guess also with the healing frequencies, with the tuning forks and with the crystal bowls, that must help as well.

Michelle Nermerich 1:10:33

Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite treatments to do is chakra balancing massage. Because I'm an aesthetician and in Canada, aestheticians can perform massages. It's a combination of like a traditional hands-on massage mixed with Reiki. And I'll go over each chakra, balancing each chakra. And then I actually, if somebody's really out of tune, I'll even bring out my tuning forks, which I have tuning forks for all the chakras. And I'll um go over the chakras with each tuning fork. And if there's really out of balance, I'll even get my Tibetan chakra bolts and put them over the chakras that are really affected and just get the chakras all humming.

Regina Sayer 1:11:15

You mentioned sisters. So what do your sisters think about what you're doing?

Michelle Nermerich 1:11:19

One sister

Regina Sayer 1:11:19

Do you give them treat? Do they does she get treatment from you?

Michelle Nermerich 1:11:22

She unfortunately does not believe in what I do. She says it's a placebo effect. The only thing she does believe in is the neurohealth practitioner I done because it's science-based. Even though I have showed her a lot of scientific studies that have been done around sound healing, and she is like, well, that's more frequency, not sound. I'm like, frequency and sound go hand in hand. You can't have sound without frequency. And you can't have frequency without sound. I'm gonna get to her one of these days. She'll get an injury or something, and then I'll help her with my tuning forks.

Regina Sayer 1:11:58

But she's seen how you have been healing yourself with all of these different tools, and so she still doesn't fully believe?

Michelle Nermerich 1:12:06

She thinks it's a placebo effect what I'm doing on myself. Where my dad does not. He sees it as actual true healing. Okay. And I'm actually trying something new out on my next door neighbor. She has agreed this morning to she's having knee surgery, and I told her after a week after she's done, I want to use my tuning forks to see if I can speed up her recovery time. So every other day I'm gonna go over to her and use my tuning forks on her.

Regina Sayer 1:12:32

And has she ever had any other type of session with you?

Michelle Nermerich 1:12:35

Her husband has. When I was going through Reiki training, he was because you need to do so many people before you can level up in Reiki. So he was one of my people that I did. Um, he also, when I was playing around with my chakra balancing massage, I just said, come on over. I want to try a new modality that I'm working on. I always ask my friends and family to be my guinea pigs, and a lot of them love it. Um, she was working full-time as a teacher, so she never had as much time. Now she's retired, so maybe she'll be my guinea pig now. And she is open to this stuff. Like even today, because her surgery's tomorrow. So I worked on her knee today a bit, and she's like, Can you come back and do my other knee after your podcast? Uh she's like, I feel a big difference, and I'm overcompensating with my other knee now. So yeah, after I'm done here, I'm gonna go tune her other knee for her because she just after that one treatment on her bad knee, she's having the surgery in tomorrow. She've already felt a difference.

Regina Sayer 1:13:36

So

Advice for listeners and choosing what feels right

Regina Sayer 1:13:37

I want to ask you a couple of things to do with advice and tools. So you've been obviously learning lots and lots and lots of different things. Has any of the things that you have learned just you've sort of said, okay, nah, that's just that's not working. That's not for me.

Michelle Nermerich 1:13:55

No, no, everything I learned, it's almost like my higher self is guiding me to these things. I almost feel like in past lives I was doing all this stuff already. And it's just coming back to me now again. Like a lot of the stuff almost comes naturally. Even when I had my Reiki master, my first one, I would give her massages and she's like, You're channeling Reiki through these massages. And I'm like, How? She's like, it's in you. Like she did past life regression, and she found out that in a bunch of lives that I was a healer. And she's like, it's always been in you. It's just dormant inside of you. So to me, a lot of this stuff just comes really naturally. I can't explain. Ever since I was young and started with aromatherapy, I've always felt like there was something different in me.

Regina Sayer 1:14:47

So, what do you advise for somebody who is having something that a doctor has said they can't heal or that they can't be cured, or that they're only gonna have a limited amount of mobility or something similar to you?

Michelle Nermerich 1:15:03

I would suggest to them explore what makes you happy, first of all. If it's calling out to you, explore it. There's no harm in it at all. If it feels right to you, that's what you should be doing. You can explore so many different healing modalities, and I think that's why I'm addicted to learning because they've all worked in different ways for me mentally, physically, emotionally. They all have their own methods for healing. And yeah, what I would suggest, just try one for yourself. Try one, and if it doesn't, try something else. Never give up, though. Never give up. That's one word of advice I have. You're stronger than you think. Like I never thought of myself as a strong person at all. And the last four years have shown me how much strength mentally and physically I actually have.

Regina Sayer 1:15:54

Okay, so in terms of a tool, what is a good tool that you would recommend somebody who is a very beginner into exploring things? What is a tool that you do that is a simple tool that they can use for whatever reason?

Michelle Nermerich 1:16:09

Basic breathing. Because breath can control pain. Your breath can control pain, it can control your sleep, it can control anxiety. It's all in how you learn. Like I just Googled in the beginning, like, how can I help my sleep? And I learned about different methods of breathing that can help you sleep. I learned about different breathing methods to help control pain, which that one I kind of knew because when I had bad pain days, I would just close my eyes, take a deep breath in, and try to double elongate my exhale. I would just feel like I could feel the pain coming from the top of my head, and I would imagine it just going out through my feet while I was breathing it out. And I could feel my pain. It wasn't much, but slowly and slow more and more I felt the pain helping to go away. It was this girl I actually met on the internet when I was talking about my journey with her. She's like, I just finished taking this breath practitioner course, breath work practitioner course. And she's like, You would be excellent at it. She's like, just with all the stuff you already do, which was meditation at that time, spiritual coaching, and the sound healing. And I fell in love with breath work just because of how, first of all, it helps with pain and it helps balance your nervous system. So the type of breath work I do is called somatic breath work. The first half of breathing, we activate your sympathetic, so your fight and flight by breathing in through the mouth, out through the mouth for half an hour in three different stages. And then the second half, it's the parasympathetic, so it puts you into your rest and digest. And it's in through the nose, elongate through the mouth or nose, whichever feels more comfortable to you. And then when you get the both activated, it helps balance out your nervous system. And all the research I'm doing, a lot of people's issue is a disregulated nervous system. You're not expressing your emotions properly. And I know with myself, that's what a lot of it was. Well, was with my ex-husband, I wasn't allowed to express my emotions. If I did, I was looked down as weak. Or I was told, I'm shedding my crocodile tears again. So because I heard the crocodile tears so often, I just held it, I held it all in to the point where I felt like I was an emotional zombie, you could say. My nervous system and my chakras, everything was so disregulated.

Regina Sayer 1:18:44

I can just imagine somebody might be listening to this and going, okay, so I'm going to breathe in and out through the mouth for half an hour. I mean, is this something that you would you advise somebody to do on their own?

Michelle Nermerich 1:18:55

No, you cannot do it on your own. You need a guided practitioner. You can do on your own breathing for a couple minutes, five minutes max, but doing a full hour-long journey, I don't recommend doing it because even when I do it over Zoom, I have my clients facing a video camera facing them so I can see how they're breathing, if they're starting to hyperventilate or not. And then there's key phrases we use through the breath work, which is a little bit like NLP, neurolinguistic programming, to help reprogram the mind. So the first half is like a clearing phase. And I would never recommend anybody because if you're not doing the breathing technique properly, you can hyperventilate easily. You can get tetany, which is like cramping of the hands and feet. You can almost paralyze your whole body by breathing the wrong way.

Regina Sayer 1:19:50

Okay. That's really, really, really good to know because I got my mind keyed into the 30 minutes of breathing in and out, and I'm thinking, oh, somebody might have just keyed into that too.

Michelle Nermerich 1:19:59

And no, because like I said, it's done in three the 30 minutes is done in 10 minute sections where there's breath holds and everything involved.

Regina Sayer 1:20:08

Right. Just keep that clear.

Michelle’s work today, closing final reflections

Regina Sayer 1:20:10

Okay. So what exactly is it that you do offer? Because we've been sort of bouncing all over the place talking about different things here. So what is it that you're doing?

Michelle Nermerich 1:20:18

I offer breath work. I offer sound healing. I offer meditation, spiritual coaching, uh, neurohealth practitioner, which is another form of coaching. I offer Reiki. I offer chakra balancing massage. And then I also do a lot of therapies where I combined a lot of my treatments. Like I'll do a sound healing breath work chakra balancing session. I'll do a chakra alignment sound bath meditation. I have this one thing where I call my ultimate holistic experience, which you're with me for three hours almost. And it depends on the person, anywhere from two and a half to three hours where we go through like a mini breath work session, meditation, sound healing, chakra balance, and massage, pretty much everything that I offer combined into one treatment. And that's actually the one where I get the most powerful results for a lot of my clients.

Regina Sayer 1:21:23

But that has to be in person.

Michelle Nermerich 1:21:25

It has to be in person.

Regina Sayer 1:21:26

Because of the massage.

Michelle Nermerich 1:21:27

Because of the massage, yes. And the Reiki can be done distant, which I do a lot of distant Reiki for people. But a lot of people say the hands-on, especially when it comes to my crystalline Reiki mixed with the massage, is just more powerful than just doing distant crystalline.

Regina Sayer 1:21:46

But the coaching and the other services, you can do online.

Michelle Nermerich 1:21:48

The coaching and the breath work can be done online as well, yes.

Regina Sayer 1:21:52

And where is it that people can connect with you? You have a website and Instagram, I believe.

Michelle Nermerich 1:21:57

I do have a website, www.soundbreathhealing.ca. I'm on Instagram. It's sound.breath.healing, as well as Facebook. And I've actually turned my personal Facebook now into also my, it's called Michelle Soundbreath. Facebook's weird and the name I get to give myself.

Regina Sayer 1:22:21

Okay, so all of those links will be in the show notes, most definitely. I think you've also got some meditations on your website, if I remember correctly.

Michelle Nermerich 1:22:31

No, I have sound baths. I have sound baths on my social media.

Regina Sayer 1:22:35

Okay.

Michelle Nermerich 1:22:36

Instagram is weird how they limit how long you can do. Where Facebook, I have, I think some of them go almost half an hour long, some of my sound baths on Facebook.

Regina Sayer 1:22:45

Okay. And so the best way is to wear earphones, I imagine, if you listen to those.

Michelle Nermerich 1:22:50

It is, yes. Or if you have like a surround sound speaker. I'm actually playing around with different mics to get the sound even better. Right now I'm using just an attachment on my cell phone, and sometimes you hear too many background sounds. Like my last one I didn't post because my air conditioner came on. And that's all I could hear was the background sound of that. So I'm like, as much as I liked it, I didn't like the background noise I could hear.

Regina Sayer 1:23:15

Yeah, it's tricky.

Michelle Nermerich 1:23:16

It is.

Regina Sayer 1:23:17

So there are definitely some things that you can go and check out that belong to Michelle. And also please do come back and listen to the special episode where we're going to talk about all these different types of Reikis that fall under the umbrella of Kundalini Reiki. Is there any final words that you want to add before we close?

Michelle Nermerich 1:23:35

Just to tell people never give up on yourself and always be your authentic self, even if people make fun of you. You will never be happy if you're not truly authentically yourself, and you'll never love yourself. It all comes from self-love and self-acceptance.

Regina Sayer 1:23:51

And with those beautiful words of advice, we'll close now. So thank you, listeners, and thank you so much, Michelle. Thank you for everything. I can't wait to do the part the session about Reiki. It's going to be very interesting.

Michelle Nermerich 1:24:03

I can't either.

Regina Sayer 1:24:04

Okay, everybody, until the next time. Have a wonderful, beautiful day wherever you are in this vast world. Bye, everyone.