Today’s guest is Mike Govino, a man who has been dealt some difficult hurdles in life but has come out smiling on the other side. Mike’s journey began on a rough start, beginning with his mother’s experience with trauma regarding his father while Mike was still in the womb. Thus, Mike believes he was prone to having genes for addiction, autoimmunity and cognitive issues, which did show up later on. His mother, suffering from alcoholism, lost custody of her children over their father, who had a large religious congregation and was later revealed to be a pedophile. Mike and his father didn’t get along, so he found himself in the wrong crowd by 11 years old. Emotional neglect and lack of nurture from his mother geared him towards anxiousness.

Mike’s involvement with the wrong crowd as an adolescent led him to using and selling substances, specifically opiates. It was actually this money that he used, later on, to buy his first house after becoming sober at the age of 25. Today, almost 19 years later, he has not touched an opiate since. While Mike was detoxing himself, his father’s story came out in the newspaper. Though he had quit using opiates, Mike was struggling with alcohol addiction and began attending AA meetings with his mother and has been clean off all substances since 2004.

Mike shares his revelation that the body holds our trauma and ultimately makes us more susceptible to illness, disease, etc. When he was 26, a doctor told him that his entire colon was ulcerated. He left the colonoscopy with hoards of medications and managed to get himself in remission. On a backpacking trip throughout South America, Mike contracted a parasite. He speaks of the connection between our gut and brain. His system was so sensitive and inflamed that he couldn’t even be in an everyday environment. Rather than following the advice of traditional medicine, Mike began seeking forgiveness of those in his past, changing his diet and practicing mindfulness to turn the corner back to the path of wellness. Now, Mike is a certified holistic health coach. His ideal clients are people in recovery from addiction and want to experience deeper healing.