Today we’d like to introduce you to Corinne Feinberg.
Hi Corinne, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
This story begins in 2008 when I had finished my first year of college in Boston and was returning home to San Diego to spend the summer. I was expecting to enjoy my three months off eating homecooked meals, reconnecting with high school friends, and lounging by the pool. My summer plans changed immediately the week after my arrival as I began experiencing stomach pains, light-headedness, and rapid weight loss. It seemed that anything I ate made me sick, and I began seeing doctors in hopes of finding out what was causing such a reaction in my body. I saw four doctors that summer and none could settle on a conclusive diagnosis. One doctor, a gastroenterologist, told me I most likely had either colon or stomach cancer, which, thanks to the results of an ultrasound, endoscopy, and biopsies, proved to be incorrect. I spent the rest of the summer fearful of my condition and disappointed at the inability of the medical community to diagnose my problem. I reluctantly went back to school without a clue as to what was causing my symptoms. My senior year of school was when my mysterious illness finally came to a head. I had lost a total of 35 lbs., could barely stand without feeling dizzy or fainting had extreme gastrointestinal upset and was losing my hair. I could sleep endlessly but never felt well-rested. Two years later, in August of 2010, after seeing a specialist in Rheumatology and Internal Medicine, I was finally diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease. In that two-year time span, my immune system was not only under severe attack from the Lyme spirochete; I also had contracted Mycoplasma and Streptococcus and had early symptoms of an autoimmune disorder, Sjögren’s syndrome. My immune system was in shambles, and I was faced with the decision of which treatment protocol to undergo. My Western medical doctor recommended a common protocol of taking three different oral antibiotics, as well as undergoing intravenous antibiotics for up to 16 months. Something about this proposed treatment did not sit well with me. I felt this physical sensation in my stomach that made me apprehensive to commit to this treatment. This gut feeling, or intuition as I would call it, became my compass rose and I trusted it in telling me to go another route. And fortunately, my parents supported my gut reaction. The side effects of being on antibiotics for extended periods of time can be detrimental and would have required ceasing treatment for Lyme disease in order to treat the side effects caused by the antibiotics. Possible adverse reactions to antibiotics include diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, C. difficile infections, and yeast infections in the mouth, intestines, or vagina. Antibiotics also destroy a wide spectrum of bacteria in the body, unable to discriminate between the good bacteria our body needs to uphold our immunity from the foreign or destructive bacteria. This mass sweeping out of bacteria causes an eradication of yeast and beneficial bacteria (also known as normal flora) from our intestines, mucous membranes, and skin. A lack of normal flora can lead to vitamin deficiencies and further immune suppression, making it all the more difficult for the body to fight off Lyme disease. Long-term use of pharmaceutical antibiotics also puts one at risk for antibiotic resistance, which is the inability of the antibiotic to inhibit growth of certain types of bacteria, rendering antibiotic treatment useless in treating infections caused by that particular bacterium. All this research provided me with the reassurance to trust my intuition and explore alternative ways of treating Lyme disease while supporting my system in the meantime. I tried a multitude of treatment forms, including acupuncture, juice cleanses, extreme dietary modifications, colloidal silver, homeopathics, essential oils, naturopathic supplements, nutraceuticals, Chinese medicine and herbs, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, infrared sauna, and Rife machine treatment. The interesting thing about any treatment of Lyme disease is that if it is effectively killing the spirochete, you will experience a Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction. This occurs when the spirochete dies from treatment and toxins are released into your system, causing your symptoms to flare up. Therefore, in Lyme disease treatment, it is a good sign if you are feeling worse; however, this makes for poor motivation to continue treatment. With each alternative treatment I tried, I gained a better understanding of what made me feel worse and what made me feel the same, or in other words, what was effective and what was not. Some forms of treatment produced mildly increased symptoms. Others made it painfully obvious that the spirochete had infiltrated my neurological system and had affected my speech articulation. Ultimately, I was hoping that my treatments caused a worsening of symptoms because that was the only way that I knew the treatment was effective. However, it was not until I found Reiki energy healing that I realized there was a different way to go about treating my symptoms. I had stumbled across the healing modality of Reiki at The Soul of Yoga in Encinitas, CA, that combined the energy healing practice in a yin yoga class. I was living with my parents at the time and had dedicated the previous six months to experimenting with different forms of Lyme disease treatment. After finishing 42 consecutive days of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, I was feeling the positive effects oxygen was having on my symptoms, and I wanted to reproduce the same experience of connection with my breath outside of the chamber. I attended yoga classes to focus on deeper breathing, but never thought I would experience such deep relaxation as I did once the Reiki practitioner worked on me in class. Lyme disease had turned on a switch in my body that overworked my organs and kept my body in a fight-or-flight mode. I honestly felt as though Reiki turned that switch off, and my body was finally able to begin to heal itself. After experiencing Reiki in only one class, I somehow knew that this state of relaxation was what I needed to feel on a regular basis, not only for the sake of my pain but for my sanity, too. As fate would have it, there happened to be a Reiki Level I training advertised at the studio that same month, and I decided to enroll. I was longing to feel that warm exchange of energy that I had experienced in the yoga class, and I was ecstatic that I could learn how to facilitate this feeling with self-treatments. I learned both Reiki Levels I and II in a span of two months, and I began giving myself treatments every single day. I had private healing sessions with Reiki Masters during this span of time but relied heavily on the constant supply of healing energy at my fingertips, which I had gained from my Reiki training. I also used Reiki continuously throughout the day to manage sore muscles, waves of nausea, headaches, and periods of high stress. Any flare-up of Lyme disease symptoms was treated with my own hands, facilitating Reiki, and I was truly feeling its positive and gentle effects. After three months of daily Reiki self-treatments, I was miraculously symptom-free and had made the decision to take myself off the almost 50 daily supplements, homeopathic, and nutraceuticals. It was a decision that I felt once again from my intuitive gut, and since it had served me well the first time, I was not going to ignore it the second time. I was feeling healthier than I recalled ever feeling and had so much energy. I finally felt like the 22-year-old I was! However, to feel healed is different than being cured. Although I knew I was completely healed and released from the burden of my symptoms, my parents were curious what the Lyme disease tests would show as far as my progress was concerned. I agreed to get the tests, but I detached myself from what the results showed, trusting that I cared more about how I felt than what the blood test detailed. Two months passed without a call from the doctor’s office regarding my results. Finally, on the day of my 23rd birthday, I decided to call the doctor and see if my results were in. The response on the other end of the line was “Oh, I see them here. They came in three weeks ago. Yes, the test came back negative. I guess no one had called you because we don’t need to schedule a follow-up appointment for you to see the doctor.” I was speechless and still am whenever I think about that phone call. This year will mark 12 years since being free from Lyme disease and my other diagnoses, and it was because of my own experience with complicated health issues and the miraculous recovery I experienced with unconventional methods that led me to share the work I do to those in a similar position. Since Lyme Disease, I have become voracious in my appetite to understand the body and how it is affected by our choices, our thoughts, and our feelings. I’ve become motivated to learn about the root causes of our modern health afflictions and how to support the body in healing itself through natural and holistic methods and even found myself in a similar position of needing to heal myself with out-of-the-box-thinking when I was experiencing long-term Covid symptoms that weren’t responding to what allopathic or naturopathic doctors were offering me. I have risen from the ashes of debilitating health more than I expected to as a woman in my mid-thirties, and I never thought I’d be carving out a profession in the health and wellness industry, but these experiences have brought me closer to myself and shown me miracles through direct experience along with a quality of life that far surpasses anything I could’ve imagined – one full of beauty, wonder, pleasure, empowerment, and absolute joy – and I just want to help other people in similar positions of chronic or mysterious health issues experience the same.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Life is one big lesson of learning, or rather, multiple lessons learned through various aspects of living. When it comes to my work and really my life as a whole, I’m seeing the cosmic joke of how everything has been a lesson in being myself. Not only does being myself include pursuing what feels most like me or most in alignment with who I am, but where can my talents best be supported, and where do I feel like my gifts are most valued? Not everything is for me, and thank heavens it’s not. That would be far too many choices. But within the obstacle I developed parts of myself that were really necessary to be seen, and I needed those parts of me to “come online” in order to take the next best step. I see every challenge as just a poorly wrapped gift, and if we get hung up on the packaging, we’ll never obtain the gold inside. We have the opportunity to become who we want to be in the moments we’re presented with a challenge, and I like to see every challenge as guiding me towards where I want to be. Don’t hate the obstacle, but rather get curious about what it’s teaching you about yourself. It truly is a treasure you’ve most certainly been hunting for.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I educate on how to decode the body’s symptoms with natural options to address it from a holistic and root cause approach. My specialty is chronic illness, terminal disease, misdiagnoses, and those who have seen countless specialists only to have exhausted allopathic treatment options, never receive a diagnosis, and feel more lost and hopeless than when they first began their hunt for optimal health. As someone who has been in this exact position multiple times, I was motivated to learn about the body and, most specifically, my body. No one will ever be closer to my body than I am – and the same goes for everyone with their own body – and yet it seemed like such a mystery. I was left with questions like, “If I’m the only one that can feel the experience of what’s happening in my body, why can’t I understand what’s going on inside of it?” And after reversing my own chronic illness, autoimmune disease, mold illness, and long-term covid, and recurring candida overgrowth, I decided to learn about the body from a medical standpoint and make the information applicable to modern health afflictions, as well as digestible to the common person so that they, too, can understand their bodies and heal themselves naturally. I have certifications as a holistic health practitioner, an herbalist, and a RoHun transpersonal psychology therapist.
In addition to seeing clients one-on-one, both in-person and remotely, I teach herbal medicine classes and share immersive herbal medicine experiences in a group format and private session. One of my monthly classes is the Folk Herbal Medicine class at the San Diego Botanic Garden in Encinitas, CA, where I teach from a sensory perspective, pairing the science of health with the art of healing. This class at the garden is more than just “this plant is good for that symptom or condition” but rather a felt experience of how herbal medicine affects our bodies as a whole where students can have a tangible experience of the benefits of herbal medicine and build a relationship with the plant kingdom in a deeper way. The backbone of this teaching is building trust within ourselves and our bodies, along with ways to heal ourselves with the natural world of plants.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
San Diego is so centrally located to a variety of natural surroundings. You can go to the beach and then drive an hour and a half inland to be in Julian’s snow (season-dependent) or hit the desert of Jacumba by driving south. It really is a nature lover’s dream. Not to mention San Diego is in close proximity to Mexico and Los Angeles where you can be in another country just by driving across the border and in a major city with the same amount of driving in your car. I haven’t always been in love with San Diego but it mostly stemmed from a difficulty to mark time based on a lack of seasonal change; however, this has shifted drastically over the past decade and I may be an anomaly saying this but I do enjoy the weather changes that have taken place. My backyard has never been so green or akin to the wild and unruly land I lived on in Southern Vermont, which is one of my favorite sights for these sore eyes.
Contact Info:
- Website: linktr.ee/corinne.feinberg
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/corinne.feinberg
Image Credits
Leah Lipson
