Unstoppable Body and Mind

Episode #75- Coaching Call

Most episodes I teach a concept or explain a principle.  But today you get to hear an actual coaching call, so you can see how to apply these concepts in real life.

 

Listen in as I coach a client through her beliefs about scarcity around money, and how that creates anxiety and pain in her life.

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, 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

 

 

 

Episode #74- Client Success Stories

In this Episode I am joined today by 3 former clients, so you can hear first hand how Body and Mind Lifecoaching with me has transformed their lives.  

 

They started with chronic hamstring pain, SI pain, 10+ years of chronic back pain, foot neuropathy, and chronic fatigue.  

 

Now they are all chronic pain free.  

 

They learned:

• What kinds of thoughts or feelings were contributing to their physical pain.
• Strategies to calm their nervous system, and rewire their brain to produce less pain.
• How to identify and reframe thoughts that were causing chronic fight or flight.
• How to tune into, and make peace with their bodies.
• To understand that when old or new pains come up, it is a message to check in with themselves.
• Tools to identify, process, and move through their emotions and physical pain.
• Confidence in their ability to handle the unknown in the future.

Curious to see if coaching could help you?  This fall I will have a group coaching option available, as well as a few 1:1 spots.

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, 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

 

Here is the contact information for:

Martha Doornink - https://www.facebook.com/martha.doornink

 

Jane Springer- website https://www.janespringer.com/, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jane.p.springer.9 contact Jane https://www.janespringer.com/contact/

 

Transcript-Automatically Generated:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 74, Client Success Stories. 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. Welcome today. I have three special guests on the show today, people that have coached with me and I am going to talk with them and let them introduce themselves a little bit.
Let's start with Jane. Maybe just introduce yourself a little, what your symptoms were when we met and what drew you to coaching with me.
My name is Jane Springer and I started coaching with you, Betsy, because I had read the book by John Sarno about back pain a while back. And so I was already familiar with his principles. And then I heard you on Katrina Ubell's podcast.
And so from that, that's why I contacted you, but I had had hamstring pain for over a year. And I thought that I had injured it with a trainer, but then it just kept on and on. And I did all kinds of things.
I went to physical therapy, and I did all kinds of remedies. I went to different doctors and they wanted to inject me with stuff. And so I just said no.
And so, I mean, I was open because nothing that I was doing was helping. So that's why I contacted you.
Yeah, that's I think a common thing where you've tried lots of physical treatments and nothing has helped. Okay, great. So Vicki, how about you?
What kind of symptoms did you have when we first talked and what drew you to mind-body coaching?
Yeah, yeah, my name is Vicki Rowe. I'm a pediatrician. And actually tomorrow as my 25th, I'll celebrate 25 years having done private practice.
So, and a lot of my mind-body issues are related to that, that circumstance. But yes, I also learned about you through Katrina Ubell. I was in her Weight Loss for Doctors Only program.
Over about a year ago, I finished when COVID hit. And then my income was kind of taking a hit. So I kind of just laid low out of coaching, listen to her podcast.
And your episode just really, really clicked with me because I just feel like, I got the weight and the eating under control, but I have a couple of pain issues, mostly a neuropathy in one of my feet. And that had caused me a lot of trouble, especially with my call schedule. But the primary thing, I felt like I'd learned to work around that.
But the chronic fatigue was just something that I, just for years and years, could not get a handle on. I felt really good if I'd slept a lot, but I'd seen, done three sleep studies, all kinds of work on that. And so I thought, yeah, this could really help me.
All right, Martha, what about you? What kind of symptoms were you having and what drew you to coaching?
Yeah, so I knew about coaching because I'm a certified health coach as well as a Life Coach School certified coach and a back pain sufferer for 10 or 12 years. And it was getting worse and progressively more life-affecting and life-constraining. I was starting to feel really worried about certainly big things like working out or taxing my body, but even like leaning over to pick up a pencil because my back had gone out so many times with such a minor situation.
And we're retired, so we're a little nomadic, COVID notwithstanding. We have a place in the Napa Valley that we've had for many, many years, and we happened to end up being at that location during the fires last fall. And our old, old house was, I mean, people all around us were burning, and it was truly terrifying.
And I came back from that eight days, we finally left and said, we need to breathe air, we need to go somewhere clear. And when I got to the next location, I was like, wow, even I can tell there is a huge connection here between the fact that I am in full back rest, I cannot move, I'm in dire pain. And I called a medical office that's nearby, and they did inject my back.
And then I spent the rest of that day almost fully asleep. And I just thought, no, this is not a way forward in my life. This is getting worse.
I can see there's a stress connection, a psychology connection here. So being a coach, we're on a common Facebook group. And I have read Dr. Sarno, and this episode led me back to Dr. Sarno, thinking this is it.
This is what's really going on here for me. I have a chiropractor in every location, every port. It only ever works for a few days.
So I had texted you, I emailed you on Facebook for a consultation right as Katrina Ubell, who I listen to every week. That episode had come out. So I was like, okay, this is definitely a confirmation.
I'm going in the right direction. And it was really miraculous. Awesome.
After that, because we started my body coaching right after that.
Yes. And we could talk about that maybe first with you, Martha, because you had quite a quick turnaround. Do you want to talk about some of your quick success that you had?
I feel like I was, yeah, it was kind of a perfect storm of really miraculous, amazing success. And because I was trained in coaching the entire year before, and I had done self coaching scholars as well for a year before that, my self-awareness was definitely in a new place. Hopefully I haven't stopped and I'll continue to grow in that, but it was a combination of self-awareness, being very open to the likelihood that there was a mind-body connection at the foundation of this.
And really, truly for me, believing there is no separation between the mind and the body. This is just one structural system and that it's really very artificial to separate the two. So I was very open to that.
And everything that you and I coached on at the beginning, it was clearly just a bunch of thoughts. And I started actually turning around my belief, that my dad was a doctor. He lived to almost 102.
And because he was elderly for so long, I really remembered him saying, hey, if you want to become weak in your elderly years, just go sit in that chair over there and don't get up. Don't use your body. It was like, no, my body becomes more strong.
Like a weight lifter becomes strong when I use it. I'm getting stronger by using it. So that was a real turnaround for me.
What other kinds of results did you have from coaching? And then we'll talk to the other ladies.
Well, okay, I haven't been. Betsy, this happened within a month of you and I starting coaching.
And the results are not typical. I'm gonna even say that because everyone is on their own path. And I'm just gonna interject just a tiny bit too, Martha, with your story, because I love this.
You kind of alluded to some traumatic things in your childhood and like, I don't really wanna go there and I don't wanna dig that up. And kind of in my own head, I was like, oh yeah, we'll have to go there for this pain to resolve. And you didn't, which is another kind of, not typical result, but it did happen.
And I will say, parenthetically at this time, I haven't been to a chiropractor since last October. That is a miracle for me. I have not had low back pain at all.
I do respect that my body and my brain were very used to handling my stress and my emotional life by putting it out through my body. It continues to try that. I think there's sort of a little whack-a-mole, like get one side fully hammered down, and there's another area that might be trying to come up, but I'm on to it now.
Yeah. Yeah, it can be information.
I use the tools. I know what, I can see what's happening.
If there's specific things that, like specific results that you gain from coaching that you maybe didn't expect.
I did not expect the ease. I believed that it was fully possible that the whole thing was resolvable through the understanding this mind-body connection.
Yeah.
And we know our mind is that powerful. But that really truly, that was not an attempt. That was a legitimate belief on my part.
I truly still feel that way.
Yeah.
I do coaching on my body now because it's so amazing and so dramatic. To me, to understand that I did not have to go back and parse year by year, we're retired now. My life is, I'm well through at 66.
That would be a lot of going back, right? And I didn't have to do that. So that has been amazing to me to realize the power of just understanding the mechanism of the emotional life on the body, and acknowledging that the emotions are there.
Which as a people pleasing person, as a good girl, as a nice person, that doesn't even live on my island normally, right? I had to get a new place to appreciate that.
Oh yeah, that's some good stuff. All right, Jane, what about you with kind of what you learned from coaching, the results that you had with your body?
I had been struggling with this for a year. And when we started diving into the mind-body stuff, I mean, we started talking about things that might be bothering me, what's going on in my mind. And it turned out that I had been obsessing about my coaching business and picking a niche and figuring out what I wanted to do for five years.
And so, my body just decided that it had enough. So, I kept saying, oh, it's the trainer. She just started something really fast and I just injured something.
But then after we started working together, I was learning that I can talk back to my back, to my leg and say, it's okay, it's all right. We got this, you don't have to stress about it. And so, I've gotten so I'll talk to my body.
And then in the middle of when we were coaching, I had a very disturbing and upsetting situation with my sister. And we became estranged and it was not a good situation. And the hamstring pain was gone, but then I was getting SI pain bad, and particularly on one side.
So we explored that, like talking to it and figuring out what's the color and letting go and those kinds of things. And so now I know that if my hamstring or my SI joints or some other thing that all of a sudden pops up in my body, then I say, wait a minute, what's going on? Okay, so there must be something going on.
I'm stressing about something. I'm thinking about something. And it's funny because since we scheduled this, my SI joints, and I haven't talked to my sister in months, and I'm not stressing about that, but we're leaving for North Georgia tomorrow.
And so I've been busy running around, trying to buy all the groceries and pack all the stuff and figure it all out. And so today I was thinking to myself, okay, now we can just calm down about this, and it'll be okay. It'll be okay.
We'll leave tomorrow. And if they have stores up in North Georgia, I'm pretty sure we forget something, it's okay. So I just take a good look at what is going on right now in my brain, what am I stressing about?
And generally, you know, now I can figure it out. I don't automatically assume, oh, I need a Tylenol, or oh, I need a heating pad, or something like that.
And so you don't have chronic pain of any kind, but you have some...
Not anymore. No, it comes and goes.
And then you kind of check in with yourself when you get that pain as kind of a reminder or a red flag.
Yeah. One of the things when coaching with you, you'd say, okay, honey, what's happening? And so I try and say that kind of stuff to myself, like, okay, dear, what's happening now?
And gently and with compassion, instead of like, oh my gosh, it hurts so bad. Why does this have to happen? That kind of thing.
Yes. All right, Vicki, you've had some amazing results with your foot and your fatigue.
Yeah, it's, yeah, definitely beyond, a little beyond what I thought would be possible even. Cool. So yeah, because especially with my foot pain, I, you know, is some one of those things that was just gradually improving after 12 years.
I was like, fine. You know, I just kind of worked my life around it. I just, you know, didn't stand a lot.
I actually have a motor scooter for my hospital rounds. But yeah, even just now I'm to the point where I'm even seeing some improvement, and that has been really huge. But I kind of started out, I think, you know, listening to your podcast for a while before we started coaching was great.
I started, you know, especially doing like, you know, the somatic tracking and the pen vent and some of the things that you've taught. And, you know, doing a little bit of self-study on mind-body stuff, you know, like Dr. Sarno and some things like that. But yeah, I still remember one of the first times I coached, I woke up with a headache, which was really common for me to wake up with headaches.
And usually, I just, it would happen on my days off. And I think it's because as I put, I think I even told you at the time, I would just, well, I slept really hard. And when I sleep hard, you know, then I've got all this tension, residual tension in my head, you know, after 10, 12 hours of sleep.
But once the headache's gone, then I feel pretty good. So I was so used to taking ibuprofen, and I remember you coaching me through the headache. And I, honest to God, have not, I think maybe once in the last nine months, have I taken ibuprofen for a headache.
It's like, I'll just maybe have, you know, if I have one at all when I wake up, I usually can just, you know, knock it out. So I think that gave me the confidence to start tackling some of the other things. Like I had an old SI joint injury that, you know, was still flaring up and I was able to practice on that.
But fatigue seemed, it was harder for me to get my head around that because it wasn't just pain, it was, you know, just emotion. And well, sometimes you're just like, well, maybe I really didn't sleep enough this night, or maybe I did. And so, yeah, so we just basically, as you know, we've done a ton of work on, you know, accepting it, but also not being so fearful.
And for me, a lot of the fight or flight, you know, getting out of fight or flight so that I don't have so much residual exhaustion at the end of my day has been the huge part.
That's such a great thing to point out, right? Like it takes a lot of your resources to be in constant fight or flight. And as a doctor, you kind of thought you had to be in fight or flight all the time to be on your best, just to not miss anything.
Yeah, and that was really probably when I, even when I listened back to the first time I talked with you, I was still like kind of convinced that, well, that's what they train you in med school is, you've got to be just on top of it because a patient, if you make a mistake, you can write a bad prescription or miss a diagnosis. So my way of coping with that was always just to stay like super highly focused. And I think through working with you and then even exploring some other things that ER physicians and with some military people do, how it's like, yeah, maybe your fight or flight is good for two seconds, but then you really got it, even if you're in the middle of a battle, you got to calm it down and relax.
And just that going from hypervigilant to vigilant and trusting that I was actually going to do a better job if I kept just vigilant and kept my parasympathetic nervous system engaged, which as a doctor was good too, because I'm like all about the parasympathetic nervous system and sympathetic nervous system. All of it made so much sense to me from a medical standpoint too.
Yeah, and it made sense cognitively, but then it took some practice to really not be revved up.
Yeah.
So it does take some practice sometimes, and that's totally normal, especially if you've been kind of primed for that anxiety and hypervigilance, like you said.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, and now it's funny because we kind of coached earlier today, so you know this. So I feel like I've gotten better with some of that hypervigilance at work, but now I'm kind of dealing with the anxiety on my days off.
And originally, I was having that. We did a lot of work about the to-do list and accepting just getting a little bit out of fear about the to-do list and trusting. So we did a ton of work on that.
But yeah, now it's, you know, I think just I'm still having that time when I'm not at work. I'm like, oh gosh, what's going to happen? So but I feel more trusting that I feel trusting that I'm going to get there because I feel like we've come through so much else.
Yeah, I think the progress you made with fatigue was so phenomenal because it seemed really impossible for you to believe differently when we started. And I remember how much you argued for, you know, I need this much sleep and how bad it was. Yeah, I didn't get the sleep.
And once you started actually kind of allowing yourself to sleep the amount that you needed to, you actually found you needed less sleep than you thought.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if I had days where I didn't, I, you know, just didn't freak out about it. And I still came home like even a couple of days ago, I came home just, you know, pretty tapped out after it was a good day after vacation.
But I kind of knew what to do. And, you know, I did a lot of, I do a lot of your meditations. And, you know, it kind of helped me to conceptualize my fatigue as I would say, well, it's kind of like a migraine.
It's like, you know, it's and so sometimes, you know, one thing migraine sufferers do is sleep. And sleep a lot of times cures their migraine. So sometimes when I would do the somatic tracking and get into the actual symptoms of the fatigue, there are a lot of times I'll actually fall asleep doing it.
And I'm like, well, that's fine. You know, that's a great way to fall asleep for me. And other times I can let it pass.
And, you know, it's like get to the end of it and look at it much more neutrally than, oh, my gosh, it's a catastrophe. I'm like, so tired. I'm gonna fall asleep driving my car or something.
Right. Yeah, there was kind of this like everything seemed like survival mode or life or death. And just showing your brain that it doesn't have to be in fight or flight all the time.
Yeah.
So good. I'll just open up to any of you to take this leap of faith. Were there some doubts that you had about if this mind body stuff would work?
And maybe what helped you decide to do coaching that might help someone else?
I personally don't want to coach anybody who has zero belief that my body is part of their symptom situation and their pain situation. So if they have zero, no. But if someone has even 10 or 20 percent of an open mind, that yes, that amount, even if they have a diagnosis in their hand, if they also reserve the possibility that the mind-body component could be in play, this is pay dirt.
This is where you can really begin to see some resolution that you have not been able to get through other sources.
Yeah, that's such a good point, because I think sometimes people think, well, I have to believe, you know, believing is a huge component of having your pain actually go away. And I have to fully believe and I don't.
So I think just having an open mind and a willingness to that's the possibility that that's what is.
What about you, Jane or Vicki?
Well, I was, you know, to the end of my rope, so to speak. And when I heard you on Katrina's podcast and reminded me about Dr. Sarno, whom I'd read years ago, it clicked all of a sudden, like, I really need to investigate this because everything else has not worked. And I'd much rather work on my brain than get injected or take medicine or anything like that.
So I would encourage anybody to at least be open to the idea that there is a connection and that it's worth exploring.
Yeah. With Vicki, do you have any comments on that?
You know, I kind of felt like I was ready to roll like after listening to your podcasts and everything, and just, you know, doing some self study, I think just because I'd seen so much of it, even in pediatrics, you know, it's definitely not an area that I'm trained in is, you know, pain management. But, you know, just having seen for years and years, you know, just with myself and my patients, you know, how much, you know, biofeedback, desensitization, things like that help. And I was kind of ready, you know, I'm like, hey, you know, this is like, after all the money I've spent on, you know, my deductible for, you know, different orthotics for my shoes and, you know, tens units and, you know, CPAP, I even did CPAP for a while, even though my sleep studies didn't even actually show significant sleep apnea.
I tried CPAP and that didn't work. So, yeah, I'm like, and even just like, you know, seeing if, okay, maybe there's some vitamin things that, you know, maybe there's something like that out there. But yeah, when I think of how little money I have spent on any of that in the last year, I was like, okay, that definitely was a good investment, you know.
Yeah.
And same thing with like doing the weight loss. I kind of learned that through the weight loss coaching too, that it's like, okay, it's an investment, but I look at it as the semester I never had in medical school. And, you know, it's just stuff I really need to learn for myself and my patients.
So that kind of motivated me. So yeah, so I was pretty sure I would get results. I just wasn't exactly sure what it would be, but it's, you know, definitely has exceeded expectations.
Oh, fantastic. Yeah. Amazing.
All right. What was it like for you to work with me? My ears are burning.
No. But as far as did you, what was the atmosphere like? Did you feel supported?
What was it like? Martha, do you want to start?
I so admire your light approach. You have a very light-hearted approach. I always felt completely supported and contained safely.
So let's just start there. And that was really quite a good start out of the gate, right?
But then the sense of your humor and your light-heartedness and your warmth really comes through when you coach. And I think when we're talking about people who are having pain and dealing with painful emotions and things they haven't acknowledged or confronted maybe yet or are processing, very, very, very helpful. Really, really helpful.
Thank you. Yeah, that is beautiful to hear. I know you said after, I think after our consult, you said, I can already feel you holding space for me, which was such a cool, cool compliment.
Jane.
I mean, I totally agree with Martha. I think it was kind of your gentle spirit that, you know, all these things that I've been obsessing about and the thing that I went through with my family member, it was very painful and not just physically, but emotionally. And I just felt really very much supported.
And, you know, you even helped me see the other side too. And I just think that you have a very healing kind of spirit.
So that was what my big takeaway about coaching with you was, no matter what kind of condition, how much pain I was in or what I was going through, that you were supporting me, supportive.
Thank you so much. Vicki, darling.
Well, I think as you guys, the other two are saying, you're dealing with someone that's in quite a bit of physical and emotional pain. So I think just really being able to empathize without just saying like, yeah, you're right. Your life's awful.
That's terrible. Get out of that. You would listen and then be like, okay.
I still remember you saying, you'll go, okay, we can make a case for that.
It starts to kind of poke holes in things. And sometimes it's still, even after a session, I'd have to kind of go back and be like, okay, what do I really believe? And as you know, sometimes I couldn't come up with a thought right there on the call, but after a few days, I'd be like, okay, I think I've got a new thought that will help me through this thought model.
So yeah, so that kind of really like in-depth supportive coaching, I think has been huge for me. And I have gone back into the group, you know, kind of the group setting too, to continue to work on doctor things and eating and stuff like that. But yeah, this was definitely, you know, definitely a good piece of it for me was working with you.
Amazing.
You know how they say, a very famous coach has said her first coach, she would tell her first coach, you think you live in New York City, but you actually live in my head. So I have to say, there is a good Betsy tape in my head where I can hear you saying, no, that is just a thought.
Good. I'm glad to have that lasting effect on you too. What did you think about the frequency having weekly sessions?
Martha?
Yeah. Well, you know, because my physical pain resolved so unexpectedly early, to my expectation it was early, and I think it was kind of early anyway, we were able to move on to other components of coaching for me that anyone would need continued coaching on relationships. Probably that was the main focus that we worked on and continued to work on.
But I found having the luxury of one-on-one coach for an hour every week really kept me on track with my own work in between. It may not have looked like that to you, but I feel like we covered a lot of ground.
Yeah, no, you did great work. I think I covered a lot. No, yeah, I do think there's that time and space in between sessions, and sometimes it goes by fast, and you're like, oh, another session already.
But you don't necessarily have to prepare anything or do anything between sessions, yeah?
And what you find out, no, you don't. And what you find out really quickly, even while, for me, I think this is a generally speaking thing, but certainly for me, I would show up at a session thinking at the first moment, I really don't have too much to coach on. Ha ha, watch out, those are the ones where you really will find out you probably have them.
That is the truth.
A bunch of things you haven't been willing to really consider that are on the table that you can benefit from coaching on.
And just cause you get coached on it once doesn't mean it's like a one and done necessarily, so.
Really highlighted the process for me, for sure.
Yeah, oh, great.
Yeah, same for me. You know, some of the sessions would be about the pain and exploring that. But then I knew that I could bring relationship stuff, business, you know, the whole thing about, you know, what I wanted to do with my business.
And we coached on everything. So I think that was a very much of benefit that we had in a whole hour to explore that every week. So I had something every week that I could bring forward to talk about and get coached on.
So your versatility was super helpful because it wasn't all about the mind, body stuff. We could coach on anything.
That is true. And, you know, you too know who are trained as coaches. You know, you can coach on those different things because you're just helping show people their own mind.
And that's what we're trained as coaches to do, is not to necessarily tell them everything to do and walk them through it and be accountability partners. We can surely help with that. But the main thing is just reflecting to you what's going on in your own brain.
And then you can choose if you want to keep those thoughts or not, but at least you know what our thoughts and, you know, what you're doing, how it's affecting your reality. Yeah, Vicki, what do you think?
Yeah, I agree too. Yeah, I feel like sometimes what I would have chosen to coach on the day before would have been totally different than what I did with you. But I think part of the journey is, you know, you teach your clients to self-coach too.
And so sometimes I'd be like, yeah, I kind of made some progress with that issue by myself the day before. And yeah, sometimes it was kind of nice because I felt like I didn't have to be like, be completely ready with the topic and, you know, know exactly what I wanted to coach on. Usually, you know, just talking about how the, you know, what had been going on, what the day was, you know, there was usually plenty of topic to spin off on.
So yeah, so I did like that approach.
The really good thing about the timeframe, because when you're talking about resolving, like really, really making progress and resolving chronic pain, that's been around for a decade or years and years. Yeah. I was very fearful about, and we coached on this a bunch, and you really supported me through this.
What would happen if this happened again? What would happen if twinges, I call them twinges, came up, but they got, you know, worse? Or what would happen if, you know, basically you're looking at success or failure, and you know that it's up to you, and you know that it's something that would be like, okay, my brain is spinning off on something again, and it's causing pain in my body.
Yeah.
But I ended up feeling fully confident, 100% confident that if I do encounter, and I will, twinges will happen, for sure. They've already happened.
Yeah.
That I would have the skills to deal with it and work with it and contend with it and know what it was. Because the fear, when you don't know what it is, just rolls the whole thing into a full-on, you know, my back is fully out, or the person's foot is, you know, they can't walk or whatever, into a much more serious condition than you're in when you have a twinge.
Yeah, like it starts with that twinge, and then it can be very predictive in this way of like, oh, this is how I throw my back out, and this happens once or twice a year, and it's very predictive, and then it happens. Or it can be that twinge, and then you have that realization, and you use the tools that we worked on, and the twinge goes away, right?
Yeah, and it took time to build the confidence. And so that was you. You helped me through that too.
Yes, yes. What would you have as last remarks or last comments you would say to anyone about coaching with chronic pain, if they're on the fence about if it would benefit them?
I would say to listen to your podcast, keep an open mind. That's what I think is the most important is to just keep an open mind about the possibility that there might be a mind-body connection that can be worked on and corrected without medical intervention. And just keep an open mind and explore, just explore thoughts and feelings and what's going on.
And I think that it's definitely worth spending the time and exploring on.
Yeah, you can always listen to the podcast and see if you kind of resonate with it, if some of that brings true to you, if it kind of draws you in, if listening to the podcast helps you feel a little bit better that day, you know? Yeah, yeah. Vicki?
Yeah, well, I try to convince as many of my, you know, the parents and of my patients that I think would benefit and, you know, family members, you know, I tell them about you. I think a lot of times it's a journey of self-discovery because there is, you know, it is kind of what in medicine, we talk about a diagnosis of exclusion. And in a way, I do think, you know, TMS, mind-body stuff, it is a diagnosis of exclusion.
So, you know, but usually once you've kind of gone through, you know, is it an infection? Is it some tissue injury? Or even if it is tissue injury, we can heal it faster with doing these things.
So, yeah, obviously, since I, you know, strongly recommend it to a lot of my patients, I think it's worth it. And like I said, I really think, you know, just the, not just the health that I gained, but even just the outright money that I've saved has been fantastic. And it is, there is something to be said too for, you know, they say in the Bible, where your treasure is, your heart will be.
So there is something about having put my money into it that I'm like, okay, I am doing this. This is gonna, I am really gonna make the most of this, you know, cause this is where I put some of my life energy is into learning this stuff and coaching.
Yeah.
Amazing. Martha?
Yeah, I totally agree. If you have non-structural pain that you don't feel that you've gotten an adequate answer for or anything definitive as an answer for, or it comes and goes, or you wake up one day and it's nothing and you wake up another day a week later and it's on a 10. That's indicative that it's mind-body pain.
Don't wait. And you will have to be proactive. You will have to have an open mind.
You will have to be willing to put in the time to do the work. And, you know, it's not going to be like getting a pill. You're going to put some effort in here, but so rewarding and so reassuring to understand the connection and to really begin to work with both sides of yourself.
Yeah, more of a kind of healing from the ground up or finding the root cause, but better effects than a pill, too, I would say.
Yeah, no side effects.
No side effects, yeah. Are there any other last comments or questions or things that you'd like to say, ladies?
I guess one, you know, it just, this one just kind of crossed my mind because I was listening to a medical podcast and I think this psychologist has been on Cureable as well. I forget her name. But she does a lot of chronic pain stuff and explained it.
But yeah, and I don't know if you've brought this up on your podcast, but the concept of phantom limb pain really struck a chord with me as far as like understanding that, okay, like even if the body part is not even there, there's all these centers in your brain that are still feeling the pain. So that the pain, like you feel it in the body, but it's really going on in the brain. So that, and then when you kind of discuss some of the work Dr. Sarno did with how many people have just random arthritis or torn meniscus and things like that when you do an MRI, some of them have pain there, some of them don't.
I think just knowing kind of those medical things to me just was a really big convincing.
Right. So helpful because probably when you went to medical school, definitely when I went to physical therapy school, they weren't talking about chronic pain being different than acute pain. It was kind of like pain means there's something structural going on in your body.
For a physical therapist, is there an asymmetry or an imbalance or some structures that are degenerating? It's so physically based. But now they are teaching different things.
I know at least in physical therapy school, I talk to my friend and they talk about central sensitization. And that if your pain is lasting more than about three months, your tissues do heal in that time. So there are predictive neural circuits and these patterns of pain, and they feel like pain, just like phantom limb pain.
What I have heard, what they say, is it feels really like the limb is there. Yes, that's such a good example.
Yeah.
Because I think a lot of times when people actually are feeling the physical pain, they doubt that it could be from anything other than a physical injury.
I think it's really important for people to understand that all kinds of pain, no matter what kind of pain it is, it all starts in the brain.
Right.
Right. Yeah, if you didn't have a brain, you wouldn't feel pain. I mean, that's what brain death is.
All pain is real. It is real pain.
Yes. Yes. Well, and Martha does some coaching on this as well.
So if you have some specific questions or want to reach out to her, I'll have some information about her in the show notes. Do you specialize in a certain area of mind-body coaching, Martha?
I am specializing on back pain.
Yeah. So she is the back pain expert. She goes through it.
And Jane, you're doing some coaching as well, not related to physical chronic pain, but tell us about what you're doing.
No, I do wellness coaching for people with prediabetes and helping them to reverse that because I've been through that myself. I also do some relationship coaching on people who are divorced or later in life and would like to get married again because I've been through that as well. Yeah, so I diversify.
I do a few different things.
Yes, well, it's fun to see you doing those things that light you up and not struggling with the hamstring pain slash niche drama, which we could tell was about the same thing.
Yes, thank you. You encouraged me to go with what lights me up.
And Vicki is a pediatrician, so if you have babies in the area.
If you have babies in the area, more teenagers.
Yeah, yeah. But there might be some changes in the future with the direction that you said you were going as far as being interested in more mental health with those teenagers than prescribing.
So that.
Yes, so many doctors are branching out into coaching and getting out of the traditional medical practice, the turn and burn model of medical practice.
Yeah, there are a lot that are.
Yeah, so many.
Yeah. Well, I do think that's going to be so super helpful with, you know, it is already helpful with the patients you are working with. So.
Well, what an honor.
What a great honor it would be to participate in even a small way in a change, a metamorphosis in how chronic pain is conceived of and how services and help and aid to people who suffer chronic pain gets rewritten, gets recreated. That's kind of my meta goal.
Yes. I mean, it's such a message of hope. Yeah.
Because I think everyone who practices, you know, medicine or whatever it is, coaching therapy, we all want people to feel better. We would love that. And it's hard sometimes when you see people struggling with chronic pain and feel helpless to help them, you know, through the medical system or as a PT.
So it is nice to be able to just offer people that possibility of healing, that hope. And then from there, it can just exceed expectations sometimes. It's amazing.
Well, it has been so great talking to you. It's so fun seeing you all together because none of you have met before.
Thank you so much for having us on.
It is really great.
I appreciate it. And I think this will be really helpful for other people who are interested in coaching and changing their life and seeing what's possible with creating different thoughts and different results. All right.
Thank you.
Have a good rest of your night.
Thanks, Betsy.
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.

 

 

Episode #73- What You Focus On, You Create More Of

This was a fun episode for me.  As much as I love science and research about the power of the mind in healing, I also really like energy, vibrations, and the woo.  

 

Here I make a case for energy, the law of attraction, serendipities, manifesting and magic!!!  Be sure and listen, as I explain it scientifically.  And make a case for believing in fun and magic to add a little excitement to your life and your healing journey.

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, 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:

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode #73- What You Focus On, You Create More Of. 

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 loves. Today I'm excited to share with you a side of me that I don't often show you. There is a part of me that loves science and the scientific explanation and research. And that is mainly what I focus on on this podcast. Because I want people to have an understanding of their pain in a new way that doesn't sound like, really hokey and like a snake oil salesman. It's backed up by science and that is super exciting for me. But there is also part of me that does believe in magic and serendipities and energy and vibrations and the law of attraction. And so the way that I'm going to describe it here is that what you focus on you create more of. And I think I can actually merge some of the woo, some of the spirituality and vibrations and energy and explain it in a quite scientific way.

So listen on in this episode if you're used to just the science part and you've really liked that. And if you're someone like me that gets a little bit excited by manifesting things and thinking of attracting things on purpose, using your thoughts to create your reality in a way that you want. Then hopefully this is an episode that you really resonate with and you can see that there's another side to this work that can be kind of fun and magical and exciting. 

Now to start off, I'll say I haven't always been a very intuitive person. I've always been someone that's believed in kind of forces, and even extra sensory perception. And all of those kinds of things really fascinated me in my teenage years. In fact I used to really wish that I was kind of more psychic because I believed in this kind of stuff, but I really didn't think that I had the capacity.  I thought it was kind of something that you either had or you didn't. And I was just not really an intuitive person. 

Now, a few years back when I started getting into all of this, I was going through quite a few life changes, getting divorced. And that's when my friend from med school told me that ulcerative colitis was psychosomatic. So I was starting all of this work and I got really into the secret and John Sarno and Joe Dispenza kind of all at the same time. In fact, Joe Dispenza's book, Becoming Supernatural, I think I listened to it eight times in a row. I just listened to it over and over and over and almost wanted to absorb all of the knowledge into myself. I also had an awesome friend who believed in all of this kind of stuff as much or more than I did.  And he really thought I was magic, and so he helped me see things in my life that were pretty magical. And I started really believing that I was pretty magical too. And all of these serendipities started happening. 

During this time I was really learning about how powerful thoughts are and the emotions, the vibrations in our body they create. And at that time in my life I really had a lot of financial strain. So I was working on receiving what was there for me when people would offer things during that time. And I was also practicing working on abundance, which was a little bit interesting. It took a lot of creativity to practice abundance at a time when I didn't feel like I had enough. But by practicing receiving, I always did have enough. And I also started manifesting money. When I was listening to... (I listen to books rather than read them.  So especially at that time in my life I was driving around a lot for work.) So I was listening to a lot of books and podcasts, and I think I listened to The Secret two or three times in a row (not as much as Joe Dispenza.) 

But when I started really practicing some of those beliefs about money I did start receiving random checks in the mail and it's read in an Australian accent. So it was "chicks in the mayo." I got these "chicks in the mayo" that were from my Pediatrician's office from 2014, an overpayment of $19. And an overpayment here and there, money just started showing up. It was really cool, really crazy. And then a few months later I actually manifest $15,000, which was pretty crazy. Basically it was money that was owed to me for a few years at my work I'd been working five hours more per week than what they had been paying me. And I was just asking and getting curious about how I could earn more money.  And when we started investigating at my work they found that they owed me all of this back pay and they actually paid me all of it. 

So some amazing things happened when I started practicing abundance and I started to actually receive more and more. I know there are a lot of people that have read or listened to The Secret or watched the movie, and really do not like the law of attraction because of the way they interpreted The Secret and how the law of attraction works. So if you're one of those people and you're still curious about how you can really take your life to the next level and start creating things, then I would recommend that you check out Joe Dispenza.  He has such a great way of describing these spiritual, woo things scientifically. And it basically has to do with quantum physics. 

We know as we start to study smaller and smaller molecules that we are mainly made of energy. And all of the matter around us is actually mainly made of energy even though it looks solid. So everything is vibrating to some degree at this energetic level. And when things are vibrating at the same frequency, then they're a match, like attracts like. If I lost you there and that got a little weird that there's vibrations and like attracts like, then just think of this analogy. 

If you are newly in love and you're just feeling that emotion, that excitement and you're driving home and you might notice things differently when you're in that vibration of excited emotion and love. So reality is out there no matter what, but you because of the vibration of being in love might notice the birds sound extremely beautiful today.  And the sun is just glistening just right, and there's flowers that you never noticed before. And when someone cuts you off you just kind of smile and wonder why that ever bugged you. Because you're in that vibration, you're attracting to you or you're creating for yourself or what you're interpreting from this big, vast array of reality is what aligns with the vibration that you are in. 

Reality is huge and we tend to think that what our brain interprets and what we have thoughts about and the way we think about things is reality. But just imagine the frequency of what we can see. Our eyes can pick up certain frequencies of light and others we cannot perceive with our eyes. But maybe other animals could perceive them, right? Same with sounds like a dog whistle. That's not in our perception of our ears to pick up, but it doesn't mean that that dog whistle doesn't make a sound.  It's just not what we're perceiving from reality because that's not part of what we can perceive because it's not vibrationally in our range. 

And we know that part of our brain, the reticular activating system, its whole job is to basically filter reality for us. If we have beliefs about certain things, the reticular activating system will find things that back up those beliefs and totally reject or dismiss maybe not even have in your perception that things that don't back up your beliefs are even out there. So even if you don't believe in energy and vibrations and woo and love attraction, then I think I can show you how just by understanding your brain and the way that the reticular activating system works that what you focus on you create more of. 

So let's take for example someone who believes that driving is dangerous. So I know someone who believes that driving is dangerous.  And so when she gets in the car, she's feeling a little afraid. That's the emotion that it causes for her. Because of that fear I've seen her start to slam on the brakes when the light turns yellow, kind of like preventatively,. "It's turning yellow I'll just slam on the brakes." Or I've also seen this person stop in a roundabout, because the person coming up she thought maybe wasn't going to stop and. So she stopped in the roundabout. With those two examples you can probably see how she's more likely to cause an accident because of the way she's driving out of fear. Right? So she didn't have the thought that driving was dangerous, she might not feel as much fear and do those kind of unexpected driving techniques that actually would be more likely to cause an accident because people are not expecting someone to drive that way.

So it's not necessarily like because she has the thought that driving is dangerous she attracts more accidents to her, but you can see how by having that thought and the feeling it creates she is more likely to act in a way that proves her thoughts true. And often we can find evidence for what we believe is true. Sometimes even conflicting things we can find evidence on either side. Most of us just think that what we're perceiving, what we're thinking is reality. 

And so I hope this helps you see that if you have some thoughts, you could be actually creating your own reality. And this is a really good thing to realize because this is where you have a lot of power. A lot of us are focusing our attention on trying to change other people or trying to change situations or trying to change things that are outside of our control. But the area that we have the most control is our own thoughts.  And fortunately that's the most powerful thing that we can use to actually change our reality. I love those optical illusions and visual illusions that you can find online to prove to yourself that even though your brain can interpret things one way or see things one way perceive things, it doesn't mean that that is reality. And that opens up a lot of space for us to be exploring and be curious about how we could think differently. And I know this through life coaching there are coaches that coach on business and relationships and weight loss and over-drinking, and all of them do the same thing. They're working on how your thoughts are creating your reality. And it's the very same in this situation when you have chronic pain or chronic disease. 

So when we are in a certain vibration or emotion, you can think of a vibration as that emotional state that our body is in.  We only have the capacity to perceive things that are in that same vibration. That's another way of thinking of like attracts like or what we focus on we create more of. 

Another way to look at it and you might be able to see examples of this in your life is that when we are in a certain vibration we may actually block things that are coming to us. If we feel very unworthy when someone offers to help, we may decline that help and literally not receive from them something because we block it ourselves feeling like we are not deserving of it. Especially in our society, you might have been taught that you're supposed to do things on your own and that it's weak to accept help. And so look for ways that maybe you are also blocking yourself from receiving some of the things that you do want.

So if we think of our thoughts as having vibrations and having energy and being sent out into the universe and finding vibrational matches and attracting things to us, or if we think of our thoughts as kind of a bandwidth of what we have the capacity of seeing and receiving from reality, either way you can see how your thoughts are influential on how you perceive the world and the results that you have in your life right now. Now as humans our main way that we react with our reality is to notice what's around us and the things we don't like. And we focus on the things that we don't like. Often that's what we mainly focus on, right? Because we want to change them. And especially like other people, other situations, we want that all to change and we focus on that. And like what I was just saying, what you focus on you create more of.

So when we are good at noticing things we don't like and we're focusing on things we don't like, we tend to see more and perceive more of those things we don't like. We're on the lookout for them. And with pain this can happen. You become more and more hypervigilant about the pain and it's a normal thing. I'm not criticizing in any way. Of course you're going to be hypervigilant about not wanting pain. But when we step back and look at it as something that we can rewire and change, it's good to see that these patterns that run normally and subconsciously are also not serving us. When someone has pain and focuses a lot on the pain there tends to be a lot of fear around the pain and catastrophizing. And as you know if you've listened to Episode # 69, and if you haven't then you should, there is this Pain-Fear-Pain cycle.

And so having pain that creates fear as a normal response actually causes the brain to create more pain. And so if you've been dealing with pain for months, years, or decades, your brain has been used to creating a lot of this pain. That's what can be rewired so your brain is producing less pain. But where most people start and sometimes even get stuck is in focusing on not wanting the pain. And as I'm talking about in this episode, what you focus on you create more of. So they create more of not wanting the pain. So that might look like going throughout their day looking for the pain, expecting it, thinking I haven't had it, I probably will. This kind of thing always causes it. And of course these are subconscious thoughts, but again the focus is on not wanting the pain, maybe how horrible the pain is, how it's unbearable. I can't stand it. What if this never ends? What if we don't figure this out?

All of these catastrophizing type of thoughts actually cause your brain to produce more pain. So focusing on not wanting pain creates more of you not wanting pain, which means you're still in pain. How do you change that? Sometimes people think, "Well, I'll focus on what I do want." Right? I want to be pain free. I really want to be pain-free, I can't wait until I'm pain free fully. If only I were pain free. Do you see how that still has the same emotion of scarcity of wanting? So wanting to be pain free will create more of wanting to be pain-free meaning you're still in pain. So if the tendency is to desperately want something, you're still coming from that same energy or vibration of lack of scarcity and that will only bring you more lack.

Does that make sense? Okay. So then your brain might be thinking how do I get to pain-free? I don't care about all of these other explanations. I really just want to be pain-free, right? So how do you get there? 

I'm going to use the analogy of how I practiced abundance when I was literally borrowing money every month. I started by noticing that my needs were met. So instead of this place of scarcity of legitimately feeling like I needed more money so I didn't have to borrow, I saw that someone was willing to lend me money and my needs were met. And that no matter what since I knew how to practice receiving that my needs would always be met. I knew that I could practice accepting and receiving that help. And so even if my numbers in my bank account didn't show me that I was abundant, I could feel abundant.

I could feel that sensation of gratitude and abundance. And that reminds me, there are a lot of research studies about how when you practice gratitude, having gratitude, writing three things down every day that you're grateful for, you end up having more satisfaction in life and finding more things to be grateful for. So again, what you focus on you create more of. But again back to the analogy, when you practice more abundance, seeing the things that you already have that you're grateful for, then you actually start to see more of those things. You attract more of it into your life or you create more of it for yourself. However you think of it, more of it is there. Maybe it's always there, that's what I would argue. It's always there but we only perceive the things that back up our beliefs. 

So what I did with practicing abundance one other thing that I did was I would look for money on the ground.  I would see that as a sign from the universe that I was going to be fine. That money was always coming to me, it was easy for me to find money. And it got me really excited because when I saw that penny, I attached the meaning to it that everything is going to be okay in my life with money. I have what I need, my needs are always met. It was like this feeling of trust, this feeling of gratitude, this feeling of abundance. Just finding a penny on the ground, right? So that's a great example of how things can be out there in reality. And because of the meaning that we're attaching to it, we can create these emotions for ourselves that can either really help us or kind of keep us stuck. So to practice abundance I practiced seeing all of the things that I already could feel abundant about.

And I practiced looking out for more things to give me that feeling on purpose. Joe Dispenza talks about a walking meditation where you imagine yourself, your future self and how you might walk and talk and act and dress differently as your future self. So I would do that from a place of abundance. Someone who has oodles of money, where money just doesn't even matter at all. I'm this future rich person and I would imagine myself how I would walk and talk and act. And you could do the very same type of thing with pain. So first of all starting with how can you notice when you are pain-free or have less pain? Sometimes it's going into the body with somatic tracking. Sometimes it's focusing on the positive sensation. Like I have a meditation for both of those two things. The meditation for positive sensation has you focus on something that feels more comfortable in your body or neutral in your body.

So as I talk about being the detective for the opposite, making a case against your pain, looking for the times that you're pain free. Focusing on the enjoyment, the happiness, the excitement that that brings, imagining yourself as this pain-free person. I talk a lot about using your imagination with movement. And when you tie that to an emotion, a powerful emotion like joy or excitement or happiness that rewires your brain even faster. So using your imagination and imagining certain activities that you want to do pain-free. And if you're not able to imagine it pain-free, then that's a very, very good indication to you that your brain is very involved with creating your pain. I mean think about it, if you're not moving at all and you're imagining moving, and you're getting some kind of sensation in that area or even a recreation of your pain, then that's just those neural circuits firing, your brain being protective, thinking that there's really some danger. And you can start to rewire those pathways so that the brain creates less pain with those movements in your imagination and then those movements in real life.

So when you're wanting to manifest or use your thoughts to create the results of being pain-free, you want to come from a place of feeling this emotion of already having it even when all reality or what your mind telling you is that you don't. So every time you're practicing imagining yourself already pain-free or recognizing the things that you're doing with less pain. I've had some clients where in a period of one minute they'll tell me they're not getting better. And then they'll also list several things that they can do now with less pain or that they're taking less medicine. 

So what I'm saying is there's a lot of ways to talk about reality, to perceive your reality, and you might feel very justified in believing one way and that could be proven or it's true to you. Or you really feel that and it's strong, but it's also maybe not helping you as much as if you can start to shift your thinking in this other way.  And seeing that there are some other signs of reality like you could focus on the less medication and that you're able to do more without pain. And that's what you'll create more of. Just like a gratitude journal when you're looking for things to be grateful for it becomes easier and easier to find those things to be grateful for. When you look for ways that you're doing things with less pain or you're imagining that you can do things with less pain, then you will create more of that in your life.

So I hope this episode gives you something to think about. If you haven't really known about manifesting, law of attraction, energy vibrations, this whole side that I haven't really been talking about, but I really love talking about because like I said, I feel like it adds an element of fun. I have several people that will show me money that they've found on the ground and they'll think of me and they'll text me and they'll say, "Hey, look what I found I thought of you." And so it just adds that little bit of joy to my life knowing that more people are thinking in this purposeful way and using their powerful thoughts to create the reality that they want for themselves.

I wanted to talk about this because I am looking for about 15 people to start a group coaching program with me in September. And the type of people that I want for this group coaching are people that believe in the science and believe in mind, body, and also believe in a little bit of woo and a little bit of magic. So if this especially resonates with you and you want to learn how to combine the powers within you with the science and the evidence that I've been able to accumulate for you, then be sure and get on my mailing list where I will be telling you more about this upcoming group and where you can submit an application. You can email me at info@bodyandmindlifecoach.com and request to be on the mailing list. And I'll make sure you get the information. All right you guys, have a great week. Bye.

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.

Episode #72- Acceptance And Healing

In this episode, I talk about how important acceptance of your pain is. 

And not in a resigned way, like accepting you will alway have pain and working on your thoughts.   

I am talking about the importance of acceptance as the fastest, easiest way to achieve healing.

Just like you can learn to become more mindful, by accepting your thoughts and feelings.  You can also practice acceptance of the sensations you have in the moment.  When you can react to pain sensations neutrally, this rewires your brain to create less pain.

Three steps I give to creating more acceptance and healing are

1-Don't blame yourself for the pain

2-Don't catastrophize the pain*

3-Become more Neutral- find an array of ways for you to calm your nervous system, go into, or ignore the pain

*See Episode #69 to know if you are catastrophizing

Listen to find out more about how accepting the pain will help healing.

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, 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

 

 

 

 

Episode # 71- Becoming More Mindful

As I have been talking about on the last few episodes, mindfulness and chronic pain are related.

Practicing mindfulness has been shown to decrease stress, improve mental health, increase immunity and decrease insomnia.

Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

You stop living like everything is an emergency.

By becoming more mindful, you become more aware- of you inner and outer environment (in a non-reactive way). 

You become more open- not shoving things like emotions down.  And also not exaggerating the emotion.  

And you become more accepting- not reacting without thought, or being able to calm and regulate yourself after stress.   And most importantly- accepting yourself!!!  Accepting your thoughts, your emotions, seeing your humanity, knowing you aren't broken.  This is part of mindfulness that can especially help with chronic pain.

Listen for specific strategies to become more mindful in your life!

 

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Transcript:

“This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 71, Becoming More Mindful. 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 loves. Today, we're going to talk about how to become more mindful. I've had a theme going here the past few episodes about how our thoughts influence our pain.”

 

Couple episodes ago, we talked about the pain, fear, pain cycle, and about how fear and things like catastrophizing increase the brain's production of pain. So not just pain that's coming from the body that you're feeling and interpreting in your brain, but signals coming from the brain that are felt in the body and felt as real pain. Becoming more mindful has shown to have an inverse effect on pain.

 

So the more mindful someone is, predictively shows that they will have less pain. And if they are less mindful, they are more likely to catastrophize their pain, have their acute pain turn chronic, even have a slower recovery after surgery, and even more likely to have new acute pain show up. So overall, people who are more mindful have less pain.

 

Here's a definition of mindfulness that I really liked. Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we're doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what's going on around us. Basically, we stop living like everything's an emergency.

 

A lot of research has been done around mindfulness and mindfulness meditation and the effects on the brain. I won't go into all of the details, but one area that is of primary interest when we're talking about chronic pain is the amygdala. The amygdala is the center where we process the fight or flight emotions, and this area is also where pain can be generated, where there are descending pain control systems.

 

More activity in the amygdala means that you're more likely to be in a state of fight or flight or even have chronic pain. But what they've found is people who are more mindful or who go through mindfulness training are able to lower the activity in the amygdala and stay more regulated. There's also more activity in the prefrontal cortex, so the area of our brain that makes logical, rational decisions.

 

Mindfulness also shows more activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of the brain involved in logical thinking and decision-making. Mindfulness is shown to have positive effects on mental health and the immune system, can help with chronic pain, overcoming insomnia, and with burnout. There will always be stressful situations in the world.

 

Mindfulness will help you change how you react to those stressful things and help you feel calmer and more in control. So I'm gonna tell you a few general principles of mindfulness, and then some specific ways to practice becoming more mindful. The first step in becoming more mindful is to become more aware.

 

To become aware of your thoughts, of your feelings, and to become the observer of your mind. Become more aware of your inner and outer environment. And watch your thoughts and feelings without getting attached to them.

 

The next step in becoming more mindful is to become more open. Try not to push away thoughts or emotions that you're noticing that are uncomfortable. Replace your fear with curiosity.

 

Become so curious or fascinated about what's going on and how you're feeling. And especially if you have the tendency to want to stifle some of those reactions. Also be on the lookout if you generate excess emotion.

 

What are you trying to achieve there? Become more open in questioning and observing all of it. The last step is to become more accepting.

 

More accepting of yourself and others. I think this especially applies to those of us with chronic pain or conditions that have the personality traits that are typical. So people-pleasing, high-achieving, perfectionism, and trying to be good all of the time.

 

Those types of people, us, me included, we tend to put a lot of pressure on ourselves and have a harsh inner critic. So this is the area where you're more accepting of the thoughts of yourself that you don't like. The emotions of yourself that you don't like.

 

Anything that comes up that you are judging yourself about, be very mindful of that inner critic. It might just sound like background noise if you've been hearing it for a long, long time. It might even be sounding like what your parents or caregivers said to you, and then you've internalized that.

 

So I'm talking about the, not the inner voice that helps guide you and lead you, I'm talking about the inner critic that might say things like, you're so stupid, I can't believe you did this again, this is just like you, you're never gonna succeed, nobody loves you. That's the kind of stuff that you want to notice and notice that it's there without judging yourself more. So be accepting that it's there, but also not believing it.

 

Not letting that inner critic actually be what you're listening to and believing. Okay, so now I'm gonna go through a few specific tips, things you can try today or this week to become more mindful. The first one is to meditate.

 

I started meditating for just three minutes a day when I started. So if you have not been a meditator before, I would suggest just starting with a few minutes per day. Give yourself some time to quiet your mind.

 

Don't be too concerned if you're not able to keep a quiet and peaceful mind for very long. That is normal. As the thoughts come into your head, just try to let them go, notice them, not react to them.

 

Maybe return to the breathing. That can always help. So with meditation, it's just a process of connecting with yourself, quieting your mind.

 

And so you can be so gentle and compassionate with yourself. This is not an area where you'd need to perform or meditate better than anyone else. You can become more mindful by focusing on one thing at a time.

 

This one is hard for me to admit because I love the idea of being a fabulous multitasker. But the research actually does show that multitasking is less effective. So I have been trying, when I am working on something, and I get an idea for something else, just making a note of it and not actually going to my phone to check it or something like that.

 

So I'm trying this too. There's part of me that really loves the idea of multitasking. But it is an idea of another way to work on becoming more mindful.

 

The next tip for promoting mindfulness is to slow down whatever you are doing. If you're eating, if you're drinking your coffee, if you are walking someplace, whatever you're doing, taking time to not rush through it, to be with yourself and your thoughts or your activities. This can help you focus and feel less overwhelmed.

 

We can become more mindful by limiting what we're consuming. So the time we spend on our computers or phones or listening to the news or reading the news, all of this can tend to overwhelm us with a lot of information. Moving your body increases mindfulness.

 

So whether it's going for a short walk or doing yoga or just doing some gentle stretches, anything where you're becoming aware of your body's sensations with movement helps develop mindfulness. Sometimes I find people can be very harsh on themselves with exercise, and they can create a lot of anxiety and urgency around exercise. So I would just suggest moving your body in ways that feel good to it.

 

It might be dancing in your living room or playing fetch with your dog. The last tip for increasing mindfulness that I'll share today is to spend time in nature. Getting outside in nature can help you focus on the present moment.

 

And you can try, if you're used to listening to music or podcasts, try going without and just focusing on what you're seeing, what you're feeling, and what you're hearing, or any of your other sensations. Now, one thing to be aware of is, as you're noticing more things, you may start to notice more painful things. And that's okay.

 

This is still progress. You are noticing more, and that can include positive and negative things. When you notice things are painful, try to allow them, be curious about them, go into them with less resistance.

 

Be so compassionate and kind to yourself in this process. You also may notice that it's difficult feeling good emotions at times. So you may need to work on increasing your capacity for joy.

 

So think of what you can do this week to start becoming more mindful of yourself and your thoughts and your emotions and your body. Being so neutral or accepting and loving and compassionate of the things you find. All right, you guys, have a great week.

 

Bye. 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.

 

 

 

 

 

Episode #70- Mindfulness and Pain

In this episode, I talk about how more mindful people are less likely to pain catastrophize.  Which means, they will create less pain from their brain. (Last Episode #69 I talked all about how fear causes the brain to PRODUCE more pain that you feel in the body- The Pain-Fear-Pain Cycle).

 

This week we dive into understanding mindfulness more by how they measure mindfulness in research.

 

Here are some statements reflecting low mindfulness:

*I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until some time later.

*I break or spill things because of carelessness, not paying attention, or thinking of something else. 

*I find it difficult to stay focused on what’s happening in the present. 

*I tend to walk quickly to get where I’m going without paying attention to what I experience along the way. 

*I tend not to notice feelings of physical tension or discomfort until they really grab my attention. 

*I forget a person’s name almost as soon as I’ve been told it for the first time. 

 

Here are some statements reflecting more mindfulness:

*I think before reacting under stressful situations.

*I can calm down soon after experiencing distressing thoughts and impulses.

*I can describe my feelings well.

*I can perceive emotions without reacting to them.

*I am aware of the bodily sensations when I take a bath.

*I can easily talk about my thoughts and opinions.

*I can watch my feelings without getting attached to them.

 

Listen to find out more about how your thoughts affect your pain!

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, 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:

Episode #70- Mindfulness and Pain

This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 70, Mindfulness and Pain. 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 loves. Today, we are going to talk about the relationship between mindfulness and pain.

 

But first, I would like to ask if any of you have been enjoying this podcast and haven't yet gone over to iTunes to give it a rating and review. Please look in the show notes. You can follow the link there, and you can just write a few sentences or what you like about the podcast.

 

Give it a five-star rating, and that will help the podcast be found by more people and get the message out. I have about 300 or 400 downloads per week. So I know you guys are listening.

 

There's only about 57 reviews. So those of you that haven't done it yet, it would be really awesome. I'd appreciate it.

 

And with that being said, let's go ahead and move on to this topic. I've been super excited to learn more about. As I started to do research, I've been learning about what I talked about last week, the pain-fear pain cycle, and how having the reaction of fear to the pain signal will actually amplify the not only perception, but the production of more pain by the brain.

 

So what they've also found is that people who have more mindfulness, if they're more mindful, they have less pain catastrophizing. So pain catastrophizing I talked about last week. It's one way of looking at how fearful a person is about their pain, how they're perceiving it, how they're thinking about it.

 

So when people have more pain catastrophizing, that correlates with higher pain, more chances that they'll have a new acute pain, more chances that their acute pain will turn chronic, and even high catastrophizing before surgery predicts longer outcomes and a more difficult recovery. So it's important to look at these kinds of statements that people may think are just true and may say and realize that pain actually is influence by the way we're thinking and talking about our pain. So I want to talk a little bit more about mindfulness and its relation to pain.

 

People who score as more mindful have less pain intensity, less negative affect, less pain catastrophizing, less pain-related fear, less pain hypervigilance, and less functional disability. So in general, people who are more mindful have less pain. Now, in understanding mindfulness, I found a couple of scales that they use to measure mindfulness, and I'm going to read some of the statements so that you can see if you strongly resonate with some of them or if they're things that you don't think very often.

 

Just see if they seem familiar to you. They did a lot to me. So here are some statements from the mindfulness scale.

 

See if you agree with them a lot or just a little. I could be experiencing some emotion and not be conscious of it until sometime later. I break or spill things because of carelessness, not paying attention or thinking of something else.

 

I find it difficult to stay focused on what's happening in the present. I tend to walk quickly to get where I'm going without paying attention to what I experience along the way. I tend not to notice feelings of physical tension or discomfort unless they really grab my attention.

 

I forget a person's name almost as soon as I've been told it for the first time. Oh my gosh, that one. All of them so far, but especially that one.

 

It seems I'm running on automatic without much awareness of what I'm doing. I rush through activities without being really attentive to them. I get so focused on the goal I want to achieve that I lose touch with what I'm doing right now to get there.

 

I do jobs or tasks automatically without being aware of what I'm doing. I find myself listening to someone with one ear doing something else at the same time. I drive places on automatic pilot and then wonder why I went there.

 

I find myself preoccupied with the future or the past. I find myself doing things without paying attention. I snack without being aware that I'm eating.

 

Okay, so do any of those sound like things that describe you sometimes or a lot? That could show that you're not being mindful. I'm talking especially to all those people with chronic pain and disease that, like me, are probably perfectionistic, have a harsh inner critic, people pleasers, want to be good all the time.

 

So if you find yourself resonating with some of these things, first of all, know that I did with most of them, except for where I drive. Usually I know why I went there. But anyway, this is for your information, and especially just realizing this correlation between mindfulness and pain might not have been something that you've ever been told before or ever known before.

 

I know that definitely I didn't know about it until I started doing some research. So the other way that they measure mindfulness in a lot of the studies is with the FFMQ, which is the five facet mindfulness questionnaire. And I think this helps understanding what mindfulness is to look at how they measure it.

 

The five facets that they measure of mindfulness in this questionnaire are observation, which is the way we use our sensory awareness. So what we see or feel or perceive internally and externally, kind of what we focus on. Description, the way we label our experiences of the world, how we express them in words.

 

Aware actions, which is how we handle a stressful situation. Do we act out of quick judgment or we get out of autopilot quickly? The fourth facet is non-judgmental inner experience.

 

So that's the inner critic, not letting the inner critic take a toll on our happiness. This happens with self-acceptance and self-compassion. The last facet is non-reactivity.

 

So detachment from negative thoughts and emotions so we can accept their existence and choose not to react to them. Non-reactivity makes way for emotional resilience and restores mental balance. So these are the five facets of mindfulness that they measure.

 

And I want to read the statements from this questionnaire and again, see how you relate to some of these statements. See if any of them stand out to you and see if you're surprised by any of them. I know that I was.

 

So first, I'm going to read the statements that suggest less mindfulness. So something that if you're not as mindful, you might find yourself saying, I criticize myself for having irrational emotions and thoughts. How many of you do that?

 

I know that's very common with me and the people that I coach. We have irrational emotions and thoughts. We criticize ourselves, a lot of us.

 

But someone who's more mindful and compassionate towards themselves would not do that. I judge my thoughts as good or bad. I find it difficult to sustain focus.

 

I don't pay attention to my work as I'm busy daydreaming most of the time. I find it hard to express what I feel and easily distracted. I'm aware that some of my thoughts are not normal, and I know that I shouldn't feel that way.

 

This is low mindfulness. I find it difficult to describe my body sensations in words. I sometimes feel that I'm not in complete awareness of myself.

 

So did you find yourself agreeing with some of those statements? Which ones did you agree with strongly or less strongly? So as far as the statements that suggest more mindfulness, I'll read you those now.

 

While walking, I'm aware of the sensations in my body. I can describe my feelings well. I can perceive emotions without reacting to them.

 

I'm aware of the bodily sensations when I take a bath. I can easily talk about my thoughts and opinions. I can watch my feelings without getting attached to them.

 

I can feel how eating and drinking affect my body and mind. I can feel pure sensations like the wind or the sunlight touching my skin. I step back when I catch myself thinking something negative or distressing.

 

I can pay attention to the clock ticking, birds chirping, and cars passing. I think before reacting under stressful situations. I can calm down soon after experiencing distressing thoughts and impulses.

 

So here you can see what more of mindfulness might look like, being aware of how the body feels. And I would just say, you know, this isn't geared towards people in chronic pain necessarily, but the pendulum can swing a little far the other way when you're in chronic pain. So be aware if you're very, very hyper aware, hyper vigilant of your body sensations and reacting with fear.

 

That's not exactly what it's talking about. Maybe are you sensitive to any pleasant sensations in your body? That could be something to work towards.

 

If you're focusing more on negative sensations, because that's what you have a lot of. Do you notice how when there were emotions, there was not judgment about them? When there were stressful situations, the person is more able to think about what's going on, detach themselves from the reaction.

 

There's more emotional resilience. I think of mindfulness as being in the present moment. If you are focusing on something in your body, especially in a pleasant or neutral way, you are in the present moment.

 

That's why the breathing can be such a tool. If you are focusing on the breath, then you can't be thinking about the past or worrying about something in the future. I hope I gave you some things to think about this week with your relationship between mindfulness, being present, experiencing your sensations, and what you're experiencing with your sensation of pain.

 

Next week, I'm going to be talking about strategies to increase your mindfulness, which will help with decreasing pain. Be sure and get on my email list if you're not already. I'll be sending out Fun Fact Friday weekly research articles relating to healing and the power of thoughts.

 

And as well, I'll be telling you where I'll be going live and any events coming up. So go ahead and check out my website, bodyandmindlifecoach.com, if you want information or to get on my mailing list. All right, you guys, have a great week.

 

Bye. 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.

Episode #69- The Pain-Fear-Pain Cycle

This episode is all about how fear of pain causes the brain to CREATE more pain- the Pain-Fear-Pain Cycle.

The way you recover from pain depends on how you respond to pain signals in your body.

Many people with chronic pain tend to "catastrophize", or attach greater meaning or significance to pain.  There are also physiologic changes in the brain, making chronic pain sufferers more hypersensitive to perceived threats. 

These things actually cause the brain to create more pain signals.  Real pain that is felt in the body.

How you react to pain makes a difference, so listen today and see how you can learn to rewire your brain!

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, 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

 

Unstoppable Body and Mind Podcast Transcripts- Episode #69- The Pain-Fear-Pain Cycle:

“This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode number 69, The Pain, Fear, Pain Cycle. 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 loves. Today, we are going to talk about how when you react to pain with fear, it actually ends up producing more pain.

 

Now, if you've just tried listening to this podcast and want to watch it, I am going to be including some pictures and a diagram. So you can watch this podcast with video on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Look for me, Body and Mind Life Coach.

 

Okay, so we're going to talk about how fear produces pain. And I like to start with this story about a construction worker who stepped on a nail that went completely through his boot. This is where I'll be showing you a picture.

 

The nail completely impaled through his boot, and he was in severe pain. He was rushed to the hospital, they gave him morphine, and then they cut off the boot and saw that the nail had completely missed his tissue. It had gone through that space in the toes and had actually not gone through his foot at all.

 

But the pain that his brain created was real pain. His brain, just like all of ours, did his best to interpret the signals from the environment, and his brain perceived that as dangerous. So pain is in essence an alarm signal, a danger signal.

 

Any kind of alarm or danger signal perceived in this area of the brain can cause the brain to create pain, real pain, that is felt in the body. Now, in his case, the danger signal was that there was potential injury, that there was a nail through his boot and supposedly his foot. So to stop what he's doing, to remedy the situation, to take care of it, to rest.

 

But we do know that these alarm signals, these danger signals, can be created from a number of different reasons, including emotions and what we're talking about today, fear. So fear can actually be a danger signal that causes the brain to produce more pain. So just thinking of how your body reacts when you're in fear, you might think of like tightening, you know, kind of hunching over with drawing.

 

That made sense to me as a physical therapist that the chronic tightness of your muscles is actually going to lead to more pain. I would see this with people who had been in a car accident, for example, and their neck was moved quickly and forcefully, and the muscles around tried to protect by tightening up. Unfortunately, the tightening would cause pain, and then the patient that I would see would be in more pain, which would cause the muscles to tighten up, kind of this vicious cycle.

 

There is research showing that people that have more fear about pain also report higher perceptions of pain. So your brain becomes hypersensitized when you have chronic pain. It's almost like the brain is always on the lookout for pain- what might happen, and more and more of your brain becomes focused on pain.

 

The prevention of pain, the avoidance of pain, the fear of pain, and pain starts to consume people's lives. So the brain activity of people who have chronic pain is more active when there is some kind of stimulus. And that could even be a sound that you don't like, like nails on a chalkboard.

 

People with chronic pain, their brain is more active when they hear something that's unpleasant. It's like their brain is always on guard and hypervigilant for anything that could be perceived as a danger. The perception of pain can be higher with fear.

 

There was a study where people were given a mild electric shock, and when fearful words or words that were pain-related were said before the shock was given, people did respond with higher perception of pain than they did if the words were just neutral words or even negative words that were not pain-related. And then there has also been a lot of research done showing that the brain actually produces more pain in response to the emotion of fear. One measure of fear that they talk a lot about in pain research is called catastrophizing.

 

So catastrophizing is something that happens quite normally with people when they've been enduring pain for some time. They tend to magnify or exaggerate the perceived threat or seriousness of pain. There's a lot of pain-related warrior fear and difficulty diverting your attention from the pain.

 

In research, they'll sometimes group people who are high catastrophizing or they tend to have more of these catastrophizing qualities versus low catastrophizing people. And what they've found is that people who rank higher with catastrophizing also have increased risk of future back pain. People who catastrophized more before surgery were more likely to have post-operative pain and a longer recovery time.

 

People who catastrophize have a higher risk of their acute pain turning into chronic pain. After whiplash in one study, catastrophizing and fear of movement were significant predictors of both disability and depression. And catastrophizing has been shown to increase people's risks of new acute pain.

 

Now I'm going to read to you what some of these statements might sound like so you can identify how much you might be catastrophizing. This is from a measurement tool called the Pain Catastrophizing Scale. 

 

And you would rate your response from zero being not at all to four being all of the time.

 

So think about these statements as I read them. Are these things that run through your head? I worry all the time about whether the pain will end.

 

I feel like I can't go on. It's terrible, and I think it's never going to get any better. It's awful, and I feel that it overwhelms me.

 

I feel I can't stand it anymore. I'm afraid the pain will get worse. I keep thinking of other painful events.

 

I anxiously want the pain to go away. I can't seem to keep it out of my mind. I keep thinking about how much it hurts.

 

I keep thinking about how badly I want the pain to stop. There's nothing I can do to reduce the intensity of the pain. I wonder whether something serious may happen.

 

So you can see there are elements of worry about the future, fear, hopelessness, and all of these sentiments and thoughts are predictors that you will have more and more pain. People are more likely to catastrophize their pain if they've seen a parent or a loved one that suffered with chronic pain or illness or health conditions. And we're going to talk a lot next episode about how mindfulness actually helps decrease pain catastrophizing.

 

Remember the number one way to rewire your brain to produce less pain is when you have the pain signal to react with neutrality, with calm, and actually with a feeling of safety in your body, a visceral somatic feeling that you are safe. 

 

And this sends the message back to your brain that it does not need to worry about this and continue to produce pain. 

 

Now, if you've heard me talk about the thought model we use in coaching, we know that the feelings of fear that we have are coming from our thoughts and beliefs.  The fear is not coming from the pain signal in the body itself. We know this because people react very differently to pain signals that they receive. When you have a pain signal, that would be like the circumstance.

 

A circumstance is just something that happens in reality. So there's a pain signal. And then what's causing the fear is not the pain signal itself, it's the way of thinking about the pain signal, the way you're interpreting it.

 

So maybe you have a belief that there is some damage, and maybe you've been told that there is damage, and you have a diagnosis. And so when you feel that pain signal, you might even imagine the degeneration or the nerve or the area that they've told you was torn, and you might be thinking of that and creating more meaning behind that pain signal. And we know from neuroscience, the way we react to pain determines if the pain signal will be amplified or minimized.

 

There's one chart I want to share with you. If you're listening on the podcast, I'll try to include it in the show notes, at least on my website. I'll email it out if you're on my email list, and I did post it in my social media today.

 

I'm going to describe it as best I can if you're just listening, but look for that figure if it doesn't make sense. Basically, when you have a stimulus of pain, there's a pain experience. And then the chart splits.

 

It could go one of two ways. If you go to the side where there's a fear of pain, it could lead to avoidance of activity. That leads to disuse, disability, depression, and loops back around to the pain experience again in this cycle where the pain and fear of pain increase the pain experience itself.

 

On the other hand, when you have the pain experience and you do not react with fear, then there is confrontation and recovery. Confrontation is the period of time where your brain is learning that this pain is not dangerous, maybe the movements that you're thinking are dangerous are not as bad as you think. It's basically showing your brain that it's okay, which teaches it not to continue, to look for the pain, and not to continue to create the pain.

 

When the pain is experienced and goes down the route of no fear, then that is what leads to recovery. Now, I want to bring this up to you because it is very important to understand how much your fear is relating to the pain that you are feeling. Now, if you are in a lot of current pain, this may seem difficult to just not have fear.

 

And there are some specific strategies I talk a lot about on my podcast. And if you're struggling with your belief that this is a structural issue that's causing pain, then you should get on a free 60-minute call with me, and we can go through your specific case and really evaluate in your situation if this is work that will help you. All right, my loves, have a great week.

 

Bye. 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."

Episode #68- Therapy vs. Coaching

Do you know how therapy and coaching are different?  

 

In this episode I tell you what therapy and coaching have in common, what their focuses are, and how to determine if therapy or coaching is for you!

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, 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

 

Episode #67- Words Matter

In this episode  I talk all about the importance of the words you use!  

Inspired today by this quote by Bruce Lee,

“Don’t speak negatively about yourself, even as a joke.  Your body is energy and casts spells, that is why it is called spelling.  Change the way you speak about yourself, and you can change your life.  What you’re not changing, you are also choosing.”

We can see how words matter with the placebo effect and how pain is interpreted.  There is also power in the words we use to describe ourselves, and limiting beliefs we might have.  

Words matter when we talk about our mind, our age, and with pain.

Listen to find out more!

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, 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

 

Episode #66-You Are Safe Meditation

This week I give you a short meditation that you can use to increase the feeling of safety in your body.

 

When you are feeling stressed, anxiety or chronic pain, you are essentially in fight or flight.  In this meditation, I help you find the PARASYMPATHETIC state of rest and repair (where your body can heal). 

 

Feeling safe in your body is the number one way to rewire the brain and nervous system to generate less pain.  This meditation will help you find a safe place mentally, and create the feeling of safety in the body.

 

Try and re-create this feeing of safety in your body and mind throughout the day, maybe hundreds of times.  You can do this "micro-relaxation" 200-300 times a day to retrain your brain.

 

For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, 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