Beyond Physical Wellness: How Addressing Trauma and Spirituality Unlocked Healing for Ryan Severson

In this powerful episode of The Nathan Newberry Show, functional health consultant Ryan Severson shares his remarkable journey from debilitating chronic illness to complete recovery and how addressing the spiritual and psychological aspects of health—not just the physical—became the key to his healing and the foundation of his approach to helping others.

Introduction

What does high performance truly mean in a world obsessed with metrics and material success? For Ryan Severson, a functional health consultant specializing in complex chronic illnesses, high performance extends far beyond professional accomplishments or financial gain. It encompasses "the ability to handle a lot of stress and be very resilient... covering things like finance, fitness, family, friends, spirituality—kind of covering all those aspects."

In this revealing conversation, Ryan shares how his own seven-year battle with debilitating chronic illness led him to discover the critical connection between physical health, emotional healing, and spiritual wellness. His journey illuminates why so many people remain stuck in chronic health conditions despite trying countless treatments, and offers hope for those struggling with seemingly unsolvable health challenges.

Ryan's story demonstrates that sometimes the most transformative healing occurs when we look beyond conventional approaches and address the often-overlooked emotional and spiritual dimensions of wellness—a perspective that has enabled him to help clients who have spent decades in the medical system without finding relief.

From Marine to Chronic Illness: A High Performer's Unexpected Journey

Ryan's path to becoming a functional health consultant began with his own health crisis—one that was particularly shocking given his background as an athlete and fitness enthusiast.

Growing up in Minnesota, Ryan was an avid ice hockey player who also enjoyed baseball, golf, and football. After some trouble in his late teens, he joined the Marine Corps, which further instilled discipline and a focus on physical fitness. Following his military service, he worked for AT&T while pursuing his interest in fitness, eventually obtaining a personal training certification.

"I was doing that on the side, personal training, and I wanted to move out of telecommunications and become a personal trainer, physical therapist because I was having a lot of my own injuries that I was dealing with. I had back surgery, knee surgery, hernia surgery," Ryan explains.

Despite his athletic background and fitness knowledge, Ryan's health began to deteriorate in unexpected ways:

"I ended up straining a pec muscle that put me out, and I wasn't able to work out for about two months. It just seemed like other injuries, a lot of fatigue, insomnia, and I had a lot of stress going on at that time. Then one day, I woke up right around my 35th birthday, and I felt like I was a 90-year-old man. It literally took me like 90 minutes to put on my pants and get out of bed... my back hurt so bad, my muscles were locking up, I had neurological twitches."

This sudden health collapse sent Ryan on a medical odyssey that would last for years:

"I had started going to see doctors—saw my family practitioner, didn't really have any answers for me, all my blood work came back fine. Saw rheumatologist, ENT, gastroenterologist, neurologists, and nobody could really figure out what was going on with me."

Doctors suggested he was simply overstressed and needed more sleep, but with only three hours of sleep per night and intensifying symptoms, Ryan knew something more serious was happening. As a personal trainer who thought he "knew everything about diet," he began exploring alternative approaches, including meditation, functional medicine, and the paleo diet, which helped reduce inflammation but didn't resolve his condition.

The Environmental Factor: Discovering Hidden Mold

The turning point in Ryan's health journey came during a Thanksgiving visit to his family in Minnesota. While away from his Chicago condo, he received a life-changing call from an environmental inspector he had hired:

"He called me on Thanksgiving Day and he's like, 'Are you in your home right now?' I said, 'No, I'm home with my family in Minnesota.' He's like, 'Good. Don't go back to your home.' I'm like, 'What?' He's like, 'The mold levels in your condo are off the charts. That's why you're sick.'"

What made this discovery particularly shocking was that Ryan's condo was newly built—he was the first person to live in it. The building had been hastily constructed during the 2004 housing boom with split face block (a type of cinder block) that had never been properly sealed, allowing moisture to penetrate.

"When they did the remediation, I had black mold in my ceilings, under my hardwood floors, behind where my bed was on the back side of the drywall. You couldn't see anything, but it was everywhere."

The situation worsened when they discovered that the vacant foreclosed unit below was also contaminated with mold. The financial implications were devastating—Ryan had to walk away from his condo, go into foreclosure, and ultimately file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, as he also owned several other real estate properties at the time.

"I chose my health over my credit score, and that was the beginning of a long journey to gain my health back."

The Missing Piece: Beyond Physical Health to Emotional and Spiritual Healing

Though removing himself from the toxic mold environment provided some relief, Ryan continued to struggle with his health. It would take another year and consultation with his thirteenth doctor before receiving a diagnosis of Lyme disease.

Ryan spent the next five years battling both mold illness and Lyme disease, working with functional medicine practitioners, studying everything he could, and gradually improving—but only to a point.

"Five years into my journey, I just couldn't get any further. I was stuck at like 70% and nothing was moving," Ryan recalls.

The breakthrough came unexpectedly while reading a book about Lyme disease in his living room:

"I opened up to chapter 8 and it was talking about trauma and emotional issues, and it just hit me like a punch in the face. I was like, 'Oh my God, all this stuff that I've been doing—I've been missing this huge component.'"

This moment triggered the recollection of something he had experienced during meditation—images of a person he hadn't thought about since he was five years old. Ryan had been sexually abused as a child and had repressed the trauma for decades.

"I had repressed all that information, and I didn't want to look at it. So in that time sitting in my living room reading that book, I was like, 'Could this be what's holding me back?'"

The Transformational Power of Addressing Trauma

This realization led Ryan to explore an entirely new dimension of healing:

"I started diving into nervous system work, trauma, personal development, and really diving into that aspect. Once I started working through some of that stuff, that was like taking the parking brake off, and then within literally four months or so, I went from like 70% functionality to like 85-90%, and then it just kind of sped up from there."

This dramatic improvement affirmed for Ryan the critical importance of addressing all three dimensions of health—physical, psychological, and spiritual:

"In that process, it reconnected me with God and spiritual aspects. I always considered myself a spiritual person but not really religious. Learning to surrender, accept, and let go—let God, so to speak—was really a game-changer for me."

The Three-Body Approach to Healing and High Performance

Ryan's personal healing journey became the foundation for his work with clients facing similar complex health challenges. His approach focuses on what he calls "our three bodies":

"I look at health and wellness from our three bodies: our spiritual body, our psychological body, and our physical body. Most people that come to me have been working on the physical body for years, but they just don't have those other aspects covered."

He uses the metaphor of a wine bottle to explain why addressing only physical symptoms often proves ineffective:

"They're leaving a lot of—it's like the cork in the bottle of wine. The wine can't be poured if that cork's there. So we start to help them with the spiritual aspect and their mental emotional aspect, and that kind of unpops the cork, and all the hard work they've been doing finally starts to work."

Ryan's clients often come to him after exhausting conventional medical options:

"I work with a lot of people dealing with complex chronic illnesses, autoimmunity, things like Lyme disease, mold illness, and fibromyalgia that nobody else has really been able to help with. These people have been in the medical system, some of them for 20 years, and just haven't been able to get help. They've been on and off medications, seen many different practitioners."

What makes his approach effective is his recognition that healing often requires more than specialized medical knowledge:

"I've worked with some clients that have worked with some of the top functional medicine practitioners in the US, but they weren't quite able to get that high-touch support to really work them through the different aspects of health and wellness."

Reclaiming Your Health by Reclaiming Your Power

A key principle in Ryan's approach is helping people take back responsibility for their own healing:

"When you're dealing with a chronic illness in the way that I was, it's very easy for us to hand our power over to the person in the white coat and say, 'You need to fix me.' But that person's not there to fix you—they're a guide for you, but you're the person that needs to fix yourself."

Ryan applies lessons from his athletic background to his health journey and to helping his clients:

"I think I got this from playing sports, getting cut from the A team as a kid or whatever, and just thinking, 'I need to bust my butt and practice harder and really get into it, and then I would get what I wanted.'"

This approach resonates particularly well with certain clients:

"I find working with athletes and other high performers is really easy. You can kind of lay things out, and they're going to do it, whereas other people, you almost have to help them convince themselves into doing something that's going to be for their betterment."

Connecting with Nature and Inner Wisdom for Sustainable Health

As our conversation concluded, Ryan shared several foundational principles that guide his approach to health and high performance:

Trust Your Intuition

"Tune into your intuition and don't deny that. I think a lot of times in our society, we have been taught to disregard our intuition and not listen to it. I've learned the hard way that when I don't listen to it, I get in trouble."

Look Inward for Answers

"Stop looking for answers outside of you—they're inside of you. Just go inward, trust yourself, find mentors."

Reconnect with Nature

"The simplest and easiest thing is the closer you come and get back in touch with nature and the way that God created us—being outside, seeing the sunrise every morning, supporting your health in that aspect. When you bring yourself back to nature, nature takes care of you, God takes care of you, and you're going to bring yourself back to wellness."

Prioritize the Fundamentals

"I was always looking for supplements or something like that, a quick biohack. But your best biohack is sleep, healthy diet, getting outside and seeing the sun, having healthy boundaries with tech because tech can definitely overwhelm us."

Ryan's transformation from struggling with debilitating illness to helping others overcome similar challenges illustrates the power of addressing all dimensions of health—and the potential for turning our greatest challenges into our greatest opportunities to serve others.

Conclusion: The Holistic Path to True High Performance

Ryan Severson's journey from chronic illness to complete healing—and his subsequent mission to help others with similar conditions—offers profound insights about what true high performance entails. While many equate high performance solely with professional achievement or material success, Ryan's experience demonstrates that sustainable high performance must encompass physical, psychological, and spiritual wellbeing.

His story reminds us that sometimes the missing piece in our healing journey isn't another supplement, diet, or exercise regimen, but rather the willingness to look within—to address past trauma, connect with our spiritual nature, and listen to our intuition. For Ryan, making this shift propelled him from being stuck at 70% recovery to reaching full remission within months.

Perhaps most importantly, Ryan's experience illustrates how our greatest challenges can become our greatest gifts when we use them to serve others. The very illness that once confined him to his bed now enables him to help clients who have spent decades seeking solutions without success.

By embracing all aspects of our humanity—physical, psychological, and spiritual—we open ourselves to levels of healing, growth, and service that may otherwise remain inaccessible. And in doing so, we discover that true high performance isn't just about what we achieve, but about who we become and how we help others along the way.

Are you struggling with chronic health issues that conventional approaches haven't resolved? Consider whether addressing the emotional and spiritual dimensions of your health might be the missing piece in your healing journey.