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Science based strategies for the brain and nervous system, and thought work tools from life coaching to help you feel better in your body at any age!
Episodes
Monday Jan 18, 2021
Monday Jan 18, 2021
In this episode, I teach you a strategy you can use to start to change your thinking patterns and rewire your brain. It is to be a Detective for the opposite of what you already believe.
Our brain is used to seeing what we already believe as truth. So the first step is to notice that you believe something. Then notice if what your believing is serving you.
When you have identified a painful belief you have, look for ways the opposite might have some truth. You can usually find SOME truth in the opposite, and sometimes it is AS TRUE as what you currently believe.
Our thoughts are powerful. Just opening up your mind to different thoughts, can create space for new changes to occur.
Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA
Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Monday Jan 11, 2021
Monday Jan 11, 2021
The way you react when you feel pain, determines whether you continue to wire you brain for pain or not.
When you respond with fear, anxiety, worry, stress or urgency, then your brain gets feedback that the sensation it is feeling is very important. The brain prioritizes looking for pain. And the hyper vigilance and guarding actually CREATE more and more pain pathways!
When you can respond neutrally, the brain does not see it as a high priority. Since it is not urgent, the brain can stop focusing on anticipating and creating pain.
Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA
Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Transcript- Automatically Generated:
This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 49, How to React to Pain. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind.
Hello, my friends, thanks for listening today. I am going to tell you about how to react when you have pain. Now, I used to teach this a lot for several years, decades even as a physical therapist.
I taught people to tune into their bodies and to be very sensitive to any kind of pain, any kind of sensation that they would have in their body, and immediately link it to whatever activity they were doing. So I had a very physical approach. That's how I was trained in physical therapy, to look at the body as a structure, as a machine.
And if parts were broken, then we could do some exercises, maybe our stretches, some mechanical, physical things, in order to fix them. And now, what I've learned from studying research in neuroscience, is that the structures are not really shown to cause pain. Now, of course, sometimes if you sprain your ankle, or there's an acute injury, there will be a sensation of pain from your body to your brain, indicating that there's some problems, there's an injury, there's something that might be causing damage.
But that can even be overridden. Imagine if someone's being chased by a bear, and they've sprained their ankle, they won't even be feeling that ankle if they're running for their life. So we know that the perception of pain can vary depending on the situation.
Pain as this danger signal is very important to the brain. But what we learn from neuroscience is that when conditions become chronic, there are more pain pathways that are originating in the brain and felt in the body, not going from the body to the brain. Plus, you may have heard me say there's plenty of MRI research, hundreds of studies of healthy people, even professional athletes with no complaints of pain or resulting limitations in their function, who have torn rotator cuffs, meniscuses, menisci, meniscuses, I don't know, a torn meniscus or two on a knee, disc bulges, herniations.
That is so common in people, basically over age 40. If you've lived a few decades on the earth, you'll have some wrinkles on your face, and you'll have some wear and tear to your body. The perception of pain is so interesting.
There's a girl on my daughter's soccer team who ran with a dirt bike straight into a storage container, broke some bones in her face. The doctor said she still has broken bones in her face around her eye, and it's been three weeks, and she said she feels no pain. And she's out there playing soccer, running around, I would think jostling those bones.
She has no pain, no sensation of pain. And at that point, is there a threat? So if you're always taught that any painful sensation in your body means that something physically is the cause of it, then it's very easy to think that when something doesn't get better, that it means that the structure is still not healed or it continues to be damaged, or there really is something that needs to be on high alert, and you need to really watch out for and be looking for and be guarded.
So think about what happens when you're guarded. You tense up, right? When you have fear if something's going to hurt or not, you can even be sitting in a chair and thinking of a movement and start to tense up in your back.
So we know that more is going on than just what is structurally happening. And the difficult thing is that when we feel the sensation of pain, and we believe that it is structural, and we are basically giving feedback to our brain that this is important, there might be some damage, I wonder why it's not healing, it hasn't gone away yet, maybe this is never going to go away, what's the rest of my day going to look like? All of those kinds of things increase your stress level, increase the sense of fight or flight in that amygdala.
And so when the amygdala, the area that kind of processes all of the sensations, the information and the emotions, it's in the limbic system and emotional center of the brain, there's this part that's called the amygdala, and when it gets basically overstimulated, then signals can get mixed up. Things can be perceived as pain from the body, and it's actually from the brain down to the body. It can all be linked back to heightened states of arousal, stress, fight or flight that people are in chronically.
I mean, we are basically living in fight or flight, most of us. Have you ever been on vacation, laying on a beach, and you're still stressing out about things? It's because this is our normal.
Our cells are used to a certain amount of cortisol. We want to have a little bit of stress in our lives. It keeps us motivated.
All of these things, when we actually look at the thoughts and the feelings that are creating these neurochemicals, they can all actually be modified. They can be changed. If the pain has lasted for several years, and if you have tried many different things, physical things, if you've tried all the physical things that were suggested and nothing has worked for you, then please consider that you might have some emotions involved, that this might be something that you can actually work on on the emotional level, which they're showing most chronic pain and disease cases are, to a large degree.
So I want to really talk about what to do when you feel the sensation of pain. As much as you can, you want to react calmly. I know it's counterintuitive.
It's totally different than what I used to teach my patients. I used to teach them to fear, but that actually ramps up the nervous system and causes more pain to be created. So what you want to do is signal to the brain that it's not important, that it's boring, that it's not a big deal.
Maybe you can think, my body is strong, my back is strong. Maybe you can think, this is emotional, I'll deal with it later. Maybe you can think parasympathetic, you know, like the nervous system, the sympathetic and the parasympathetic.
Maybe you can just take a deep breath when you feel the pain. But I'm telling you, the more you can really believe, it sounds like some faith-based kind of thing, or like a cult or something, like you really have to believe, but this is why. The more you can, at the neurological level, at the nervous system level, respond back with a sensation of pain in your body, neutrally, then your brain doesn't keep thinking that it's important, doesn't stay on the lookout for it constantly.
When you're always looking for pain, more and more of your brain gets devoted to looking for and creating pain. So what you want to do is feel that sensation and react as neutrally as possible. Those meditations where I have you go into the body and describe the sensation, that's one way.
You can describe it neutrally, like my back doesn't feel as loose as I would like it to right now. Or you could have like a code word for your pain. You could call it banana or something, like, oh, that banana is back.
You could talk to your body, like, oh, neck, I hear you. You're getting really stressed. You're tightening up.
I'll journal about this later. We'll talk about this later. It's okay right now.
And then as much as you can, forget about it. Don't base your day around it. Try to not pain catastrophize.
Try to really not talk to people about your pain. The less you can make it important to your brain, the less your brain will create pain. So there are a lot of rhyming words there.
Every time I rhyme, I want to say, that's a rhyme. So become the observer of your body. Feel the sensations as neutrally as possible.
Describe them with neutral words, or kind of ignore them if possible. You don't have to be mean to them. You don't have to say you're not allowed here.
They're allowed here. It's going to be here. It's going to be in the passenger seat, or maybe in the back seat.
It's coming along with you, those sensations. But maybe you can still drive wherever you want to go that day. The more you can accept that it's there, but not really let it dictate you anymore.
Try and make peace with it. Try and observe it. Try to accept it.
And try to ignore it. Just try to be neutral with it. I know it's easier said than done.
If you've had some success with this, I would love to hear your comments. You can go over to Instagram, or YouTube, or Facebook. Body and Mind Life Coach.
And watch it and comment there. Thanks, you guys. See you next week.
Thank you so much for listening. I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me. Please be sure and subscribe and leave a review.
And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an unstoppable body and mind.
Monday Jan 04, 2021
Monday Jan 04, 2021
In this episode, I take you through a calming meditation. We focus on the positive sensations in your body, and finding a place of safety within that you can come back to.
This meditation is great to decrease fear and promote calm in the nervous system.
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Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA
Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
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Tuesday Dec 29, 2020
Tuesday Dec 29, 2020
In this episode I talk a little about the word I have chosen for 2021- Light.
Have you chosen a word for 2021? Today is a quick listen to get you thinking about the intention you want to set for the coming year.
Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA
Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
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Monday Dec 21, 2020
Monday Dec 21, 2020
Today I interview Danielle Savory about overcoming chronic pain, embodiment, and finding pleasure.
Danielle is a sex coach for women, and host of the podcast “It’s My Pleasure.” Her education is is in Neuroscience and Buddhist Psychology.
She shares her chronic pain journey, starting with noticing her thoughts - allowing sensations in her body, and having self compassion.
Danielle studied with Kristen Neff and learned first hand the science of Self Compassion for creating a healing environment. When you accept and reconnect with your body, you can start to notice pleasure along with the pain. Danielle says, “When you start to see the rest of the body is there to support the pain, and in a compassionate way. That would help the pain move through. And over time to eliminate it.”
Allowing pleasure was a huge part of Danielle's healing. “Soak in the good of pleasure. Let it become a part of you, your brain, your whole being. It creates a buffer system of resilience, and a nourishing refuge within your body to help you through the pain.”
Sensuality is just paying attention to the senses. Notice your body and the sensations it has. And when you can learn how to do that, then it is easier to do with your own sexual pleasure.
Learning how to practice engaging with pleasure in your body can help shift the focus off the pain and allow healing. “Just because you have pain does not mean you can not experience nourishment and satisfaction and pleasure in your body.” You can notice the pain, AND also pay attention to what feels good.
Focusing on pleasure allows you to be more present, increase joy, and find delight - which will help to improve all areas of life. Studies show changes in parts of brain involved in imagination, the creative process, rational thinking, efficiency, and focus. So the journey toward sexual growth can create neuroplastic changes that effect the way you show up in the world.
Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA
Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Monday Dec 07, 2020
Monday Dec 07, 2020
Today I interview Iva Faulknerova. I invited her on the show to talk about an online course she took through Yale, called “The Science of Well Being.”
The course is taught by Dr Laurie Santos, Psychology professor and Host of the Podcast “The Happiness Lab”
https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being
She talks about NPI: Neuro-Psycho-Immunology- the study of how thoughts effect our health. And describes some "annoying features of our brain" that keep us from feeling our best.
Listen for research based tips, to help you make small changes which can lead to greater happiness in your life.
Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA
Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Monday Nov 30, 2020
Monday Nov 30, 2020
Today I am teaching about some ancient yogic wisdom, not neuroscience. But remember, science has it's limitations. We can only observe and quantify certain things we can perceive.
Listen with an open mind, and maybe find a new perspective to look at your body and mind connection.
The Koshas are 5 layers, or sheaths, that cover the light we have within us. When the layers are dense, our light can not shine out. Our goal with the Koshas is to work to become more transparent at each layer. Then, like Saran Wrap over a light bulb, our light can still shine brightly.
And then we have layers, or "koshas", that cover that light.
These layers are made of "Maya", which means illusion
So when the layers over the light are thick and dense, the
light can not shine out. You are locked in the illusion
There are 5 layers- KOSHAS
Starting with the outermost layer- ANNAMAYA KOSHA
(Food Layer)
The part of the body that is fed and nourished by food
-represents the physical structures of the body -bones, the muscles, the skin, the organs
And you could take some things and intervene at the food level
Maybe eating certain foods or taking supplements to help with healing.
But remember too that the problem could originate from a
deeper level and be radiating out.
So it is always good to look at all of the levels, because there can be a reverberation in the body
The food layer can become more or less transparent by what we eat or drink or how we treat the physical body.
Asana or the yoga practice has some effect on the Food layer,
But it primarily works on the next layer in, which is the PRANAMAYAKOSHA- Pranic layer
Prana is LIFE FORCE.
This layer is composed of the physiological structures in the body of blood, lymph, the breath , the respiratory system, the circulatory system, and the endocrine system, like the thyroid.
So if you have ailments in any of these areas, your primary work is here on the Pranic level.
And your primary remedy is the “asana”- yoga movements to promote flow of this life force.
And the other remedy is through Pranayama- which is the breath work.
The third layer, is the MONOMAYA KOSHA (Mind layer). It is what we sometimes call the MONKEY MIND, the irrational mind, the layer of mental chatter and the emotional level of the mind
Ailments of this layer include anxiety and depression
The remedy, the way to feed and nourish this layer, is through devotional practices, keeping good company, and performing selfless service to others. Karmic yoga practices- like caring for someone else. Or Bahti yoga which is chanting, or singing helps at this level.
The next layer is the VINJNANAMAYA KOSHA (knowledge layer)
This is the wisdom, intuition, and the perception. The layer that can figure things out, plan and study. It represents the intellectual level of the mind.
The affliction of this level is boredom
So if this is you- the way to feed and nourish this layer is by studying, and staying engaged in learning, and in growing.
The final, innermost layer is the ANANDAMAYAKOSHA (Bliss layer)
This represents the highest, innermost self (which is made of bliss!). Its is the layer closest to the true self
And so it is the layer that can cause the deepest affliction.
The ailment of this layer is disconnection. Disconnection from others, from yourself or from Source
This layer is fed and nourished by devotional practices, and maintaining connection to a higher power- whatever that is for you.
Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA
Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
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If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Monday Nov 23, 2020
Monday Nov 23, 2020
In this episode, I summarize what Body and Mind Lifecoaching is, and what I teach.
Body and Mind Lifecoaching is a fusion of what I have learned studying neuroscience and mind management principles.
I teach:
1-A new way to look at chronic pain and disease-by understanding how and why the brain produces pain
2-How to respond when you have pain
3-How to feel ALL of your emotions and sensations in your body
4-How to tap into your intuition
Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA
Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Monday Nov 16, 2020
Monday Nov 16, 2020
The concept of radical self acceptance is that in order to truly change yourself, you must accept yourself just as you are.
We usually think if we are kind to ourselves, then we will never change. So we hold ourselves to unreal perfectionistic standards and then beat ourselves up when we don't achieve them.
But what if the way to change is not to be hard on yourself?
"It wasn't until I accepted myself just as I was, that I was free to change." -Carl Rogers
Radical self acceptance relates to chronic pain and disease in two ways
1-accepting all emotions we have is what John Sarno teaches. Pen-vent or journal to get those repressed emotions out, and then bathe them in self compassion
2-radically accept the sensation of the pain. Go into the body and describe the sensation. Do not fight it or dissociate away from it. React as neutrally as possible and send slow breath to and from that area. React to your body with compassion, not hate or fear.
Accept the sensation of pain, and send the message back to the nervous system that it can relax.
The best way to change ourself, including our perception of pain, is to fully accept all parts of ourself.
Radical!!!
Follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/
Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA
Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com
*Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6
*Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen
If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543
Transcript- Automatically Generated:
This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 42, Radical Self-Acceptance. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.
Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. Hello, my friends, welcome. Today, I'm gonna start off with the drawing.
Do you remember there was a drawing for $100 Amazon gift card? Well, that is being done right now. If you wanna watch on Instagram or YouTube and see me actually drawing the name, you can find me there at Body and Mind Life Coach.
And if you're listening, here's the rustle of the papers as I pick one. So the winner is Kelsey Gorkoski. So I'll be contacting you, Kelsey.
Congratulations. That was a drawing for people who gave my podcast a rating or review. And if you haven't yet, even though there's no drawing involved, please take the time.
It helps this podcast be found by more people so that this information can be shared. So today we're talking about radical self-acceptance. And this concept is based on a book by Tara Brock called Radical Self-Acceptance, a Buddhist guide to freeing yourself from shame.
The main concept with radical self-acceptance is that we all struggle with feelings of unworthiness, feelings of shame, feelings of not being good enough. And freedom doesn't come from trying to be more perfect. Peace comes when we learn to be accepting and loving of ourselves.
Once we can embrace the humanity and the struggles and the imperfections that we all have, then we can begin to create meaningful change. The feeling of unworthiness or not feeling good enough is quite universal. Brooke Castillo said that if you boil all of the problems she coaches on down to one thing, it comes down to self-worth.
And that means that just because your brain tells you you're not good enough, it doesn't mean that it's true. And it means that you're not alone. Most everyone struggles with some form of questioning their self-worth.
Now, most of us address the problem of not feeling good enough by beating ourselves up relentlessly. When we make a mistake, we think you're so stupid. Why do you always screw everything up?
You'll never succeed. You're too weak. We think that if we're harsh on ourselves, then we'll change.
There's fear that if we love ourselves when we do something wrong, then it will get worse. And we know from the model that you can never have a positive result from a negative emotion. So if the emotion we have about something is shame, embarrassment or guilt, then the actions we're most likely to take would be to beat ourselves up verbally, to hide, to not connect with others, and probably to buffer whatever it is that makes you feel good, like eating, drinking, shopping, gambling, being on Facebook too much.
Then the result is that we usually feel even worse about ourselves because we're thinking things that make us feel negatively, and then we buffer to get away from those feelings, which ends up sabotaging ourselves and making ourselves feel even worse. Our brain likes to prove itself true, even if it hurts us. So often, instead of being willing to change, we're stuck in a negative cycle of unworthiness and then buffering, which proves how weak and bad and unworthy we are.
Now notice if there are any areas of your life that you desperately wish were different. Maybe it's a body obsession or an addictive behavior or even the health of your body or chronic pain or disease. The fundamental way to change these things we don't like about ourselves is to accept ourselves, to radically and fully accept ourselves.
Carl Rogers said, it wasn't until I accepted myself just as I was, that I was free to change. So if I hate that I yell at my kids, the best way to change that is not to get really mad and frustrated with myself every time I yell at my kids. The best way for me to really be able to change that behavior I don't like is to fully accept that I am a person that sometimes yells at my kids.
I'm an imperfect human, and it's okay that I'm not perfect all of the time. I could even have compassion for myself, that when I get angry, I may yell, but that's just something that humans do sometimes. It's not an indication that I'm bad or worthless or unfit.
It just means that I have a human emotion, and in the future, I might want to react differently. Now, when you have compassion for yourself, you're not trying to change from a place of scarcity or a place of lack. You're accepting yourself.
You're knowing that you're worthy of love. You're not changing to get away from being bad, but you are wanting to change from a place of already being okay. Whatever we can't embrace with love imprisons us.
The truth is that we hold ourselves to a higher standard of perfection than what we expect from others. But if you think about it, most of us would rather be hanging around with someone that does have some imperfections. It's unnerving to be around someone who is perfect with the perfect hair and the perfect house and the perfect parents to their children, and their children always behave.
We may feel awkward because we're internally comparing ourselves. We might be secretly pleased when we catch a glimpse of their family struggling, so that we know that they're just human like us. This happened to me before, actually once I was doing a yoga class and a student was observing.
And after class, he said that he liked watching me practice. And I asked him what specifically, I was getting ready for some compliments. And he said he liked when I fell out of one of the standing balance poses, because then he knew I was human and not a robot.
So those people that we think are just perfect on Instagram, yes, part of us might look up to them and admire them, but part of us kind of hates that they're so perfect. When people don't seem to struggle or have problems, they don't seem real to us. It's not the kind of person we would want to hang around.
Or one time my dad put it this way. If you were, you know, maybe a high school basketball player, you wouldn't feel really comfortable playing on a professional team. You wouldn't really want to play with them.
It wouldn't be fun for you, even if you got the chance. You wouldn't be at the same level as them. So when we look at people who seem perfect, part of us is repelled by that.
Brene Brown calls these perfect imperfections. She says we can love each other, not in spite of these imperfections, but because of them. We are the ones putting so much pressure on ourselves to show up perfectly every time.
Other people actually like us more when we show up humanly instead of acting perfect. The process of radical self-acceptance is three steps. The first step, as always, is to become mindful.
Name what is there. Recognize when you're thinking the thought, something's wrong with me. Then respond to yourself with kindness.
Say yes to it. Allow it. Don't recoil away from it or beat yourself up about it.
Allow your insecure or judgmental feelings. Then infuse yourself with a profound sense of compassion. Bathe yourself in compassion.
Forgive yourself. Love yourself. And that is how you'll be best able to change it.
Now, how can we apply the radical self acceptance to chronic pain and chronic disease? The first way I feel like radical self acceptance correlates with chronic pain and disease is with John Sarno's theory of why the brain manifests pain as a response to the repressed emotions that we don't want to deal with. With radical self acceptance, we're accepting all of ourselves, all of the parts that are undesirable or ugly or unwanted.
And that's the same thing that we need to do with our journey with healing our pain. It's to accept that there are some emotions that our thoughts have created that we didn't want to feel, but are there in our body. If we don't feel them, then we feel them in our body.
So I think with what John Sarno recommends, with journaling, doing the penvent as I call it, and getting all of those emotions out and just recognizing that they're there. So I feel like radical self-acceptance is exactly what we're trying to do when we're working on healing chronic pain and disease. Really just recognizing all of the emotions that are there and not running away from them and not pretending that they're not there and allowing them to be there and be curious about them and accept them and bathe them with compassion.
As well, think of the concept of pain as something that you could also radically accept. What if the best way to eliminate your pain is when you notice it, to react so neutrally to it, to say yes to it, to allow it, to bathe it in compassion. When we react with fear or strong emotion to our pain, it sends the signal back to our brain that this is important.
We need to pay attention to it. We need to focus on it. It's like the brain turns up the volume of the pain and the hypersensitivity to pain increases.
Because our brain thinks it's really important and it wants to make sure we feel every pain sensation in our body. But the more we can notice our pain with acceptance or even with boredom or neutrality, it sends a message back to the brain that that sensation is not important. The brain can turn down that volume of hypersensitivity to it.
Because we know that people can have the same structural injuries, like disc bulges, arthritis or meniscus tear, and have different perceptions of their sensation of pain. It has more to do with how hypersensitive our nervous system is than the structural abnormality in our body. Some people may even have pain where they can find no structural abnormalities or medical explanations for why there is pain.
So there's a lot of evidence showing that it's not structural changes that cause chronic pain, but a ramped up nervous system and a pattern of hypersensitivity to body sensations. If you are not able to ignore your pain or react neutrally to it, you can practice accepting your pain by going into it instead of pushing away from it. Notice how it feels in your body.
Describe the sensation neutrally. Is it sharp or dull? Is it moving or stuck?
Is it warm or cold? Does it have a shape or a color? You can calm your breathing.
You can send breath to that area. When you're not fighting the sensation, it's more likely to decrease or even go away. There are many times I help people focus on and describe their pain.
And as they focus on it, their pain lessens or changes or moves in their body. I talk about going into your body on episode number 39. And I take you through a meditation where you can do this in episode number 26, somatic tracking, a meditation for pain.
Just like accepting all parts of ourselves can be difficult, accepting the sensations we have in our body, like pain, can be extremely difficult. But neuroscience teaches us that the way we respond to sensations of pain when we have them determines if we'll keep wiring our brain for pain in the future. This is a tricky skill.
We are not taught this way. So be patient and compassionate with yourself as you practice. But know that the best way to change ourselves is to fully accept all parts of ourselves first, and then we can be free to change.
All right, my friends, have a good week. Bye.
Monday Nov 09, 2020
Monday Nov 09, 2020
We all have some form of future fear, which can effect us in the present moment. People with chronic pain and disease often have so many unknowns about their health and prognosis, so future fear can be limiting and debilitating.
Today I want to talk about a specific kind of future fear- fear of evolving yourself into the next version of you. Are there some dreams you have forgotten about or no longer think are possible to chase? Are you not sure if you have a calling in life? Or what that calling is? Listen to this episode for advice.
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