It’s been a while between posts (as always) but today I felt motivated to write and in particular about my experience using Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT). It is something that has given me a huge boost in the last 6-12 months! For a long time I have held off writing about non brain retraining treatments. I think all the options for treatments can be very overwhelming when in the midst of recovery and I didn’t want to contribute to that noise. I know for me, I used to see posts like this and think, “Ok, now I NEED HBOT or I will never heal”, and it could be overwhelming. Getting my mindset right first was essential, a la my post below. If you are new to brain retraining, perhaps this post isn’t for you. But for those curious to learn about HBOT and how I was able to get it to complement my other nervous system regulation practices, please enjoy.

Last year I spent a few months working at a Mito Core, a Cell Health Care Centre in Sydney run by integrative practitioners offering access to devices to optimise mitochondrial health. This was a really great experience, I learnt a lot from the practitioners that worked there as well as the clients (of course, I was always yapping about DNRS and the nervous system).

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I had been seeing a doctor at the clinic for a few years and working for her allowed me to learn even more about integrative medicine, especially in relation to the treatment of chronic conditions, and explore potential future pathways for me in the health and wellness space. The clinic had various devices including PEMF, a HOCATT ozone sauna, red light therapy, an IMRS brain entrainment device and others. One of the most popular devices was the Hyperbaric Chamber. I was a technician so I operated all these devices and worked closely with patients

For me, I felt a little intimidated by HBOT. It took me a few months of working there before I gave it a whirl. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to equalise my ears and the chamber is a little scary if you aren’t familiar with how it works. After witnessing the device in action and learning more about it, it was time to give it a go.

HBOT involves breathing pure oxygen inside a pressurised chamber. The increased pressure allows your cells to take in far more oxygen than they would normally. It has been popularised recently by biohackers such as Bryan Johnson, whose philosophy towards health doesn't resonate with me for obvious reasons, however he does share a great summary of the physiological benefits here. There was also a study with Long COVID patients where clinically significant improvements were recorded in cognitive function, energy and pain after 40 sessions of HBOT.

A session involves lying in the chamber for 60-90 minutes as it closes and the pressure increases. You must equalise your ears or it can cause serious damage to the inner ear. Then you wear an oxygen mask to get 100% pure oxygen. Normal air outside the chamber is around 20% oxygen. The clinic had a hard shell chamber that went up to 2.0ATA, or twice the pressure of normal atmospheric pressure. This is equivalent to diving 10 metres deep in the ocean. Generally with patients we would start on 1.4ATA and work up to 2.0ATA.

After the first time I used the chamber, I felt this warming sensation in my body, as though I had better circulation. Other than that, I didn’t notice too much. Most patients don’t report anything noticeable from their first few sessions. I trialled it on and off over the next few weeks, working my way up to higher pressures. I could feel the difference in my body as I increased the pressure. The first time I did 1.6ATA was a trip. I had the most amazing nap of my life! It’s hard to describe, I went in and out of a very deep sleep state and awoke in a dreamy kind of haze. I also noticed I would sleep well after sessions (a colleague of mine would often notice significant changes to his deep sleep on his Oura ring after HBOT). At this time my use had no structure or plan, I would just use it when I had spare time. I couldn’t tell if it was having an impact on my health.

I had a break from it and a few months later I was in a bit of a post-COVID dip that I have written about here. I recall being at work and struggling with my energy a little. I was asked if I could work extra shifts later that week to cover somebody and I wasn't sure if I had the capacity. For some reason I had a feeling that if I stayed after my shift and did a HBOT session it would help me. I am not sure why that particular device called to me that day, as generally up until then others had had a more positive effect on me.

Old me would think this sounds silly, but I have learnt how to have more intuition around treatments and timing. Sometimes I just have a strong feeling on a certain supplement, nervous system tool or in this case medical device. This was one of those moments. I did a 60 minute session at a low pressure and went home. It might sound dramatic, but I woke up the next morning and felt like I had clicked back to my pre-COVID baseline. Refreshed, energetic and better than I had felt prior to the two full days of work I had done that week. After this I decided to add HBOT to my schedule with a lot more intention and commitment.

Most people believe more pressure is better. I mistakenly believed this when I first started, which is a very common belief when approaching treatments generally. I came to learn that for me lower pressures worked better. I only ever used the chamber at 1.4 or 1.6ATA. At higher pressures there is more oxidative stress which can be too much for some systems, similar to what can happen with overexposure to red light. There is more information about this in a podcast episode here featuring Dr Masha, a HBOT expert. If I overdid the pressure I would feel activated in my system, have headaches and struggle to sleep. During my observations at the clinic I also noticed that patients who were more sensitive and earlier in their recoveries tended to do better on lower pressures.

Dr Masha has another podcast episode with Dr Jason Sonners discussing his research where the pros and cons of different pressures is discussed. It points out that at lower pressures there are notable benefits that higher pressures don’t achieve, and vice versa. They also talk about how consistency is more important than pressure. The research recommended minimum three sessions a week, the benefits are also cumulative when sessions are closer together (it’s much better to do ten sessions within two weeks, compared to ten sessions across ten weeks).

Using this information, I committed to four to five sessions a week and did 24 sessions at 1.4-1.6ATA, with air breaks of 20 minutes on, 5 minutes off to induce the hyperoxic-hypoxic paradox and increase the efficacy of the treatment. I would come into work early and have a 60 minute nap in the chamber, it left me feeling energised and ready for a long day at the clinic. I didn’t always feel an instant change after a session and I only ever met one patient who had the same immediate experience I described above. Some days I wouldn’t notice much at all other than that I had a nice nap, though it is said that one hour in the HBOT is equivalent to three hours of sleep. I always felt better from it even when it meant waking up an hour earlier.

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Another thing I love about the chamber is that you can’t take your phone in, it’s a fire risk at pressure. I ended up getting quite a bit of reading done and it felt like a safe little bubble to have some time out in. I’d often do meditations or DNRS visualisations in there. I also found it interesting to observe that a lot of patients struggled with staying in the chamber for a full 60 minutes without access to their phones or entertainment. To me I wondered if to improve their health outcomes they didn’t need a device but a more regulated system and the ability to sit with themselves.

After this block of HBOT, I noticed notable improvements in my energy. In particular, I went back to Pilates and even after a long break from movement due to Covid I was SHOCKED by my strength! I was holding a side plank with utter surprise at the capacity my body had. This is one of the changes that really sold me on HBOT. I also felt changes in my cognitive capacity with improvements in concentration and ability to solve more complex problems. Another noticeable change was in my skin, it was a lot clearer with less hormonal acne.

Note: I was also doing other nervous system and healing work so of course it’s hard to pinpoint what was doing what. But the above I felt were markedly improved from HBOT.

Earlier this year, almost three months after my first block of HBOT, I had the opportunity to rent a soft chamber. Whilst it only went up to 1.3ATA, having it at home meant I could use it five times per week and do longer sessions. A lot of people are put off by the lower pressures of soft chambers but for me 60-90 minutes five times a week at 1.3ATA is more beneficial than one to two times a week at 2.0ATA. It was also a much more economical option and the practicality of not having to travel to a clinic made it easier to stay consistent. We joked we had a submarine in the house (and that instead of paying to rent my own place, I was choosing to rent the HBOT, priorities!). A few friends came and had a turn and I had my dad on a regular program. It was a great and fun investment! I ended up completing 35 sessions over 7 weeks.

I got into a really great routine of doing my DNRS rounds in the chamber as well as FasterEFT tapping. Because I was in the privacy of my own home I could be as silly as I wanted in there. Research shows that HBOT improves neuroplasticity, so what better place to practice creating new neural networks than in the chamber?

When I first started brain retraining, I stopped most treatments to focus on regulating my nervous system. I have since learnt that devices such as HBOT can help support the system to allow it to shift the autonomic nervous system into a parasympathetic state. I have become more open to integrating these treatments, knowing they aren’t essential but highly complementary.

I also started using the app BrainHQ consistently again. I learnt that neurosurgeon Dr Charlie Teo uses this app with patients undergoing TMS and it became my motivation to pick it back up. I had used it on and off over the years after reading about it in one of my favourite books, The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. I figured it was a great time to use it alongside HBOT when the brain is more plastic.

At this time I was also prepping for surgery. In late March I had a septoplasty and turbinoplasty to improve my breathing. There is a lot of research suggesting that using HBOT before surgery can improve outcomes and that it is more beneficial pre surgery than post. Timing my second HBOT block to finish just before surgery felt perfect. The surgery and recovery went well and I am sure this helped me.

It’s hard to tell exactly how much the second block contributed as I was recovering from surgery directly afterwards, plus I can finally breathe through my nose so I am sure I am experiencing benefits from that too! However, in recent weeks I have felt more strength and have been incorporating more movement and starting strength training at the gym.

One of the biggest changes in the last six months has also been the improvements in my cognitive function. My brain clarity is the best it has been in years and only continues to strengthen. This was something I took for granted when I was younger and I am so grateful to have it back. I believe the HBOT contributed significantly to this improvement.

Doing blocks of HBOT is something I will definitely do again. In an ideal world for general health, wellness and longevity I would love to do 6-8 week intensive blocks one to two times a year. Of course this depends on life commitments and finances.

As always, I don’t believe you can come in with the intention of, “I read a study that says this cured long COVID so I NEED to do this device.” Prioritising nervous system regulation is essential, however, this is a tool that can further support healing when used with the right mindset. I am very grateful for the improvements it has given me. The other week I had a full day of work, then went to the gym, then caught up with a friend. A seemingly ‘simple’ weekday, but one that I used to dream about. I am grateful for the role that HBOT has played in making that possible.

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When I started brain retraining with DNRS, I had been deep in the integrative medicine world for almost 7 years. I had been diagnosed with Chronic Lyme Disease and was working with top integrative doctors. I had a portacath, which I used to self-administer IV nutrients as well as antibiotics. I saw multiple naturopaths, had travelled overseas twice for hyperthermia treatment and plasmapheresis. I even imported my own IV phosphatidylcholine from Ukraine (the good kind from Russia, iykyk). I had worked with acupuncturists, osteopaths and a plethora of amazing practitioners. I followed a strict diet, an extensive supplement regime and was always trying something new (Grammarly is telling me that regimen is the correct word here, but truly my approach to healing was so strict and authoritarian I am going to keep referring to it as a regime). I wore an Oura ring and tracked my stats obsessively. I had an air filter running in my room 24/7, had my parents redo the flooring because of mould, I was doing absolutely everything I could to make healing happen and deeply believed in this work. I had plans to heal and become a naturopath.

I am not exaggerating when I say my mindset was authoritarian and regimented. Everyone in my extended family feared me visiting because they wouldn’t know what to feed me. I remember once I felt up for staying the night at a friend’s place and I took two big bags, filled with multiple bottles of filtered water so I wouldn’t run out, then a bag of food that I’d sit and eat by myself whilst everyone else enjoyed other food, then another bag full of my 20+ bottles of supplements. I am embarrassed to admit that now, but I also have empathy for my past self. She was being controlled by fear.

Brain retraining offered a completely different perspective. The idea that you could heal without any of these things was shocking to me. I remember seeing a video of someone in recovery raving about how they could eat burgers and cake. My first thought was, “But gluten is toxic, why would I WANT to eat that?” I slowly began to realise that my mindset was more toxic than the gluten.

It took me a while to understand how I could hold these two truths at once. The truth that some foods, lifestyle choices and environmental triggers are not the healthiest choices for our bodies. Alongside the truth that the nervous system can over-amplify our response to these same stimuli. How could I carry this out in practice? I knew EMFs, glyphosates, certain ingredients and mould were things I should avoid to promote health. But how could I avoid them without fear and without reinforcing the pathways in my brain that were already overfiring?

I also found it difficult to know how to approach treatment. Practitioners were telling me to take certain supplements and medications to combat symptoms, but brain retraining was telling me I just needed to rewire my brain. Why would I keep taking supplements if I believed my brain was the root cause?

I started to realise that my hypervigilance and the stressful approach I had to healing was doing more harm than good. However, I did not completely stop treatments. I saw supplements and treatments as support for my body while my nervous system healed. The biggest shift was moving from fear to love. I stopped approaching healing as something I had to do perfectly to survive, and instead started making choices from a place of care for my body.

I do know others in the mind-body space that completely stop everything and go all in on the mind-body approach. Dan Buglio and The Mindful Gardener both talk about this. I definitely had stints of trying this where I threw my diet out the window in the name of eliminating fear, but I took it too far in the other direction and soon realised a diet of sugar didn’t make me feel good. There is also a part of me that loves health, wellness and experimenting and trying new things. I just approach it all completely differently now. It’s about fun, love and not fear or need.

Eventually, over the course of my brain retraining journey, I gradually pulled back on treatments. I simplified my supplement protocol and reduced how often I was seeing my doctor. When I look back at those two years after I started brain retraining it’s interesting. I was very lax with supplements and diet, often forgetting to take things and finally enjoying different foods for the first time in years. I pretty much didn’t change or do any new treatments for two years. And I improved immensely. When I travelled to Japan at the end of 2023 (a milestone recovery trip I wrote about here), I was at a farm homestay and the host told me her grandmother had lived into her late 90s and had chocolate after dinner every night. She said it made her happy and that outweighed anything else. Pre brain retraining me wouldn’t have believed that, however, that was exactly the shift in mindset I needed.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in integrative medicine. I wholeheartedly believe that a skilled integrative practitioner can be a huge part of your healing journey, and it has definitely been a huge part of mine. I even worked at an integrative health clinic last year and experimented with some fun devices like PEMF and HBOT that supported my healing. I also witnessed some incredible recoveries. Improving mitochondrial health and turning off the cell danger response is key, but the most effective way to do this is somatically.

I believe that without nervous system regulation, integrative medicine can’t reach its potential. I noticed that in myself. After a few months of DNRS and focusing on my nervous system, the supplements that used to make me react started to work. If treatments are being given to a system in coherence, then its healing potential is much greater. Putting supplements into a stressed system that is fighting itself is like putting a Band-Aid on a wound gushing with blood.

I also don’t believe I would have healed as much as I have without nervous system work, but I do believe that I could have healed without integrative medicine. In my experience, the people I have met through brain retraining have experienced significantly more healing than those I meet taking a purely integrative medicine approach.

My key learning from brain retraining was to support the nervous system above all else and approach treatments with love and not with fear. This shift transformed my health.

Here are some tips that helped me rewire my brain in this way:

• When I first started DNRS I removed myself from any chronic illness groups and immersed myself in brain retraining communities.

• I pulled back to a very small set of supplements and eventually stopped taking any herbs or medications targeted at chronic infections. I didn’t stop overnight.

• Reading Louise Hay’s affirmations around health and healing truly helped me change my approach. These affirmations focus on making choices to love and honour your body. For example, “Nourishing myself is a joyful experience and I am worth the time spent on my healing” and "I choose nutritious foods that nourish my body"

• If I did see practitioners, I set boundaries around the conversations we would have. I’d ask them to just do their thing and not tell me everything that was “wrong.”

• I stopped obsessively researching treatments or supplements I could try. I stopped getting copies of test results from my doctor and needing to track everything. I stopped asking if I needed extra tests.

• I stopped thought patterns where I was linking symptoms or sensations to treatments or supplements.

• I did a lot of visualisations of myself being around triggers. I remembered the version of me who didn’t worry about being exposed to different things, going to PE class and having fun spraying different perfumes afterwards, staying in places while travelling without checking for dampness, pizza parties and endless chocolate at sleepovers. I truly tried to tap into that carefree attitude I grew up with. At first there would be a voice reminding me of the “dangers” in the environment, but I would keep repeating the visualisation until that voice went away.

• Old me wouldn’t believe this, but I actually moved into a damp apartment about 8 months into brain retraining. The rent was cheap and I knew living closer to the beach and city would give me more of a life. I lived there for about 14 months and improved dramatically during that time. I realised later while travelling that I had stayed in a mouldy place and didn’t even notice. This was the same person who had once cried herself to sleep in Singapore after hyperthermia treatment because the hotel was mouldy.

• I stopped wearing my Oura ring for a long period as I realised I was obsessing over it and its overall impact was negative.

• I was very strict about not calling things toxic or poison and removing any fears around things in the environment, especially those that are out of my control.

• I reintroduced working with some practitioners after my 2+ year break when I was in a place where I could visit without reactivating hypervigilance or fear-based thought patterns.

As always, please note this is my journey for the symptoms I had, and the ideal approach is to have a brain retraining friendly practitioner, which I am very grateful to have.

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So many of you have been reaching out asking about this and I realised, to my surprise, that I hadn’t written about it yet. Consider this long overdue.

Unfortunately, part of healing nervous system dysregulation inevitably involves patches where symptoms and sensations will intensify. Recovery isn’t linear and it is very common for things to ebb and flow. I truly believe that learning how to navigate through these ebbs, to become truly indifferent to a flare in symptoms, is probably one of the most important things that can aid recovery.

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When symptoms flare, this is just the nervous system telling you it doesn’t feel safe. It is SO hard to believe this when you first start brain retraining and you aren’t yet convinced that nervous system work will help you. But if anything, random unpredictable flares became more evidence to me that my brain was misfiring. Why did I have symptoms at times I could never tie to a change in medication or supplements? Why would I spend weeks in bed after overdoing things and at other times be completely fine? That unpredictability to me was a sign that the nervous system was in play.

When this happens we have two choices. We can stress, ruminate and wonder what is going wrong, reinforcing these pathways and contributing to the continuation of the vicious cycle. Or we can learn to respond with indifference, recognising that our nervous system is feeling unsettled and using our tools to send messages of safety. I see it as a game. The higher level prefrontal cortex, our thinking brain, needs to rise above that stressed, fearful voice of the limbic system.

The first step is understanding this is the brain. The second is finding ways to respond. Yes we can use tools like visualisations, breathwork and others taught by programs such as DNRS and Primal Trust, and double down on them, but I think the underlying mindset needs to shift for true change. Here are some tips that have worked for me:

• Don’t talk about it. Don’t reinforce the idea of a ‘dip’. Don’t complain and tell everyone you are in a ‘setback’. Language really matters. For the purposes of this post I am using the word dip, but when I have experienced an increase in sensations I try not to use the word at all. Someone once told me they call it a meadow, a little pause in the forest with sun shining through. Side note: the word meadow always reminds me of that scene in Twilight where Edward is glittering in the sun. Ok, now instead of using the word dip you can think of that and laugh at how silly it is. See how easy it can be to change our association, changing your relationship to the experience is key.

  

• Frustration is one of the biggest emotions that comes up during these times. I used to pause, validate that feeling then remind myself of higher emotions I could move towards. My inner voice would sound something like this: “Oh Alex, of course you are frustrated, anyone would feel frustrated. But is there a higher emotion we can move towards that is going to serve you better right now? Is this frustration helping your nervous system?”. Perhaps at times you may need to journal and really let that frustration out, but then start to notice where you are attaching a story to the frustration or ruminating on it. Thoughts such as, “this always happens. I’m always sick. Not again, my body can’t do anything”. Gently notice these, validate them, then redirect.

• I would also tell myself I had the choice to sit and wallow in frustration feeling sorry for myself, or to surrender and rise above. Some days frustration and wallowing did win, but more often than not I was able to accept where my nervous system was at and move into a higher state. Logically we know that the second option is the better long term choice, it just takes a bit more motivation. With both options it might not change my immediate symptoms, however, being with them with a better mindset is also a better overall experience.

• Really become aware of the thought patterns that come up. Recognise that your brain is in a stress state and is seeing the world through the lens of unsafety. The brain will start to tell you that brain retraining doesn’t work and that you can’t heal and many other wild stories! When you notice that, try to laugh it off. That is just your limbic system talking. Really try to become that higher-level observer of what is happening, watch your thoughts with detachment and try not to get pulled into them. This is your brain trying to keep you in the stress response.

• See each meadow as an opportunity to practice your tools, aim to do just a little bit better each time. You’re not going to become perfectly neutral to these sensations right away. As a woman, I used to have very challenging periods once a month. Because I knew these were coming I started to see them as an opportunity to practice staying in a higher state. During the weeks before I would write a script to read to myself during that time, something like: “You are chipping away at this every day, becoming more experienced at understanding your nervous system and how to surrender. The limbic system is learning that you are safe. This is a new opportunity to teach the body to heal.” I know others who like to have voice recordings of visualisations ready.

• Stop and feel your body. Am I tensing up? Are my shoulders relaxed? Is my jaw tight? I really love this ‘allowing’ meditation for tapping into a feeling of surrender and ease.

• Remind yourself that you are safe. The nervous system is responding to a trigger that it doesn’t need to respond to. Use this moment to teach it that these triggers are completely safe. I remind myself, the more I can relax into sensations when they arise, the more I am teaching my brain safety and the less reactive it will be in future.

• Something shifted for me when I realised I had taught myself to become indifferent to dips but there was still a part of me thinking “next time a dip comes I’ll know exactly what to do.” Then I realised I needed to change that narrative to, “I don’t have dips anymore. They are not part of my existence.” That is what I tell myself now. I had a virus recently and rested for a week or two after, but that was just what any person would do after a rough virus. Nothing more than that.

• I do use this time to prioritise my tools, such as meditation, DNRS rounds or even listening to a Primal Trust Brain Attunement on repeat. However, it’s important to approach this with ease. Not in a “OMG, I NEED MY TOOLS MY NERVOUS SYSTEM IS STRESSED, let’s do two hours of rounds” way (guilty!), but in an “ok, what tool can I use right now to send love and support to my body.”

• Oftentimes, these patches do involve the need to reduce activity. This is difficult because we don’t want to pull back out of fear of symptoms and reinforce any loops in our mind that are linking an activity or a trigger to symptoms, but we also need to recognise where our nervous system is at. For me when I pull back on activity I do it with love for my body. Because I love my body I am honouring where it’s at, but I know that those triggers are not the issue. My nervous system just needs a little bit more love at the moment. The way we speak to ourselves through this is important. We want to minimise fear and not reinforce any connections to triggers. You are not in the meadow because you ate something, moved too much or overdid a treatment, it’s just the nervous system recalibrating and rebuilding capacity.

I hope this collection of tips helps. I have a feeling this could become a series! There are so many different ways to approach it. I'd love to know what works for you, drop it in the comments.

Ps - I love hearing from you! It motivates me to write and gives me more ideas on what to share. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. Thank you to Lola who inspired this post

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People always ask me if I am afraid of getting sick again. The truth is, that I genuinely don’t believe in relapse. The more I progress in my recovery from chronic illness using neuroplasticity principles and nervous system regulation work, the more my understanding of how chronic illness manifests becomes clearer. Last year, my experience with COVID tested my beliefs but ultimately left me with a deeper understanding of how neurological programs run chronic illness patterns.

I actually wrote this piece last year when I was in Bali. Sitting at a cafe and it flowed out in one sitting. I revisited it two weeks ago, right before having surgery! Obviously getting my mindset right was essential in the lead-up and there was a bit of fear around it. Whilst it wasn’t a huge surgery (just on my nose to improve my breathing, not the aesthetic kind unfortunately, I am sure I will write about it soon), I still wanted to make sure my body and mind were in the best place possible prior. Reading and editing this just before surgery definitely put me in a good mindset.

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The brain and nervous system have set ‘programs’ that they run. I believe when someone is chronically sick, the brain is stuck in a ‘chronic illness’ program. My brain was stuck this way for years. How it gets stuck there is a trickier one to answer . Often it’s the perfect storm of events that moves the nervous system into a stress state and it maladapts, starting to run this program. For example, you may get a virus, the virus clears, but your brain still believes the threat is there so it keeps running the same program. It’s almost like a glitch in the system. (I have written more about this in a previous post linked below).

As a result of experiencing these symptoms, we become stressed, with looping thoughts and rumination, all of which reinforce messages of unsafety in the body. This deepens the brain pathways that cause illness and almost ‘hard-codes’ these neurological networks, though as we know with neuroplasticity, nothing is ever truly hardcoded. With time, this ‘chronic illness’ program becomes the default way of being.

Using brain retraining and nervous system regulation work we can teach the brain a new program, let’s call it the ‘thriver’ program (I’ve been loving this term lately, thank you Abraham Hicks). Using the tools that programs like DNRS and Primal Trust teach and signalling safety to the nervous system allows us to slowly build this new program. The brain is neuroplastic and with repetition, it has no choice but to change. New pathways get stronger and stronger until they take over our subconscious and become our default way of being. Suddenly, the brain and nervous system runs the ‘thriver’ program without us having to think about it.

I think of brain pathways like a ski run. When we create new ones it’s like skiing down an uncharted mountain for the first time. It’s not smooth at first. But the more we go down that same run, the easier it becomes and eventually it becomes the default.

Last year I had COVID and was in bed for a week but recovered quite smoothly. A week later a few stressful events happened one after another and in the weeks following I found myself with some old symptoms reappearing. I’m not going to lie, at first part of me started to think “oh no, my old symptoms are returning, am I going to relapse?” But because of all my nervous system work and my understanding of the brain, I knew I just had to keep prioritising sending messages of safety to my brain and nervous system. I could see that the confluence of stressful events had pushed my brain back into a stress state. I know that when my nervous system perceives fear, uncertainty and stress it reverts to the “chronic illness” program.

Whilst I hadn’t used that program in a while, the remnants of it are still sitting in my brain, like an old neurological imprint. Using the ski analogy, it’s an old run that perhaps hasn’t been used in a while, but once you go down it once or twice it clears up and becomes smooth again quickly. The brain says “remember this way” and clicks back into those old pathways. It’s like riding a bike after a long time, you feel a little rusty but then your brain clicks into gear. Or practising a language after a few years, the pathways are still somewhere in the back of your brain and you surprise yourself when sentences start to come back.

For chronic illness, I think that neurological imprint may always exist in the brain. But with time it will have less and less power. After years of not practising a language it becomes much harder to slip into a fluid conversation. I think this also explains why in the years following recovery some people may be more susceptible to the occasional flare. The more time we spend running the ‘thriver’ program, the more the old ‘chronic illness’ program loses its power. One of the biggest principles in neuroplasticity is “use it or lose it.” These unused neural circuits will degrade over time. In years to come, it will take a lot more stress and nervous system dysregulation to switch that old program back on.

Knowing this, I don’t fear relapse. I know with my whole being that I am not going to end up back where I once was. When I was experiencing those sensations post-COVID, I focused on all my nervous system tools. Visualisations, DNRS rounds, redirecting thought patterns, somatic work and patience, trusting that my brain would switch back to the ‘thriver’ program I’d spent the last two and a half years building. After a few weeks it did. Sometimes it really is like a switch flicks and the new program starts running again. I remember once being mid-Pilates class and feeling exactly that, flicking back into ‘thriver’ mode.

I hope this helps anyone navigating their recovery using brain retraining and neuroplasticity principles, especially anyone experiencing a setback or dip. I plan to share more practical tools on how to actually navigate setbacks in my next post.

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I met Angela through DNRS, she started the program after me. I remember seeing her face pop up in laughter yoga classes. After a few weeks and then months, I watched her improvements through the screen. Her face became brighter and more joyful, I could feel a shift in her energy. It was something I saw happen often in DNRS, I jokingly call it the DNRS Glow Up. Angela’s smile epitomises the lightness, joy and ease that can come from dedicating to brain retraining. I felt very inspired watching her and we ended up connecting. She has kindly offered to share more of her story.

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Just a warning for those currently rewiring, this post contains references to symptoms.

I know brain retraining is big on not talking about symptoms, but can you share what medical labels you were given and what symptoms you lived with before starting DNRS?

What follows is a snapshot of the conditions and symptoms Angela lived with. While no list can fully capture the reality of those years, this gives a sense of the scale.

1. Gastroparesis (at worst point, stomach stopped processing almost completely where 95% of food wasn’t getting through, and I spent months unable to hold down food or water, followed by 2 months in the hospital where I received IV nutrition, so in total I didn’t eat food for 4 months)

2. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)

3. Breathing problems when exposed to smoke, food, dust, outdoor air, many smells, mould, pet fur, chemicals, fibres from board game puzzles etc.

4. Esophagitus

5. Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)

6. Gastritis

7. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)

8. Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)

9. Trigeminal neuralgia, occipital neuralgia

10. Nystagmus (eyes rapidly bouncing and difficulty seeing)

11. Light, sound, touch, pressure, texture, and smell sensitivities

12. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

13. Tunnel vision in both eyes or complete loss of vision in left eye

14. Reactions to all foods and drinks besides water. Only had 3 foods I could eat, and even those still gave me some level of reaction

15. Migraines

16. Possible long COVID (I believe I had COVID in early 2020, before testing was available to confirm, and some of these symptoms started emerging after this)

17. Inflammation throughout whole body

18. Numbness throughout whole body, particularly in arms and legs

19. Nausea and cyclic vomiting

20. Skin rashes

21. Poor balance, vertigo

22. Brain fog, loss of thought entirely, inability to process information, disorientation and confusion unsure where I was; memory problems; inability to focus

23. Dizziness/Fainting/lightheadedness

24. Muscle cramps, twitching, shaking, tremors

25. Pain and/or burning throughout whole body

26. 24/7 sensation of electricity through whole body

27. Irritable Bowel Syndrome

28. Frequency and urgency to urinate; difficulty or complete inability to urinate

29. Costochondritis

30. Temperature dysregulation

31. Difficulty swallowing, choking/food getting stuck

32. Carpal tunnel in both hands/arms

33. Sinus pressure/blockage, pressure and itching in ears

34. Reactions to and inability to process almost all medications and supplements

35. Cold hands and feet

36. Anxiety/panic attacks, depression, PTSD from medical trauma, disassociation, daily suicidal ideation

37. Night sweats

38. Difficulty walking, sitting, standing, moving any part of my body

39. Inability to lay flat (slept at a 70ish degree angle)

40. My periods each month were so extreme that they would leave me bedridden for days or weeks

41. Chronic infections

42. Weakness

43. Restless leg syndrome

44. Insomnia

45. TMJ & tooth pain in all teeth

46. Couldn’t consume hot or cold food/drinks they had to be room temperature

47. Bloating causing extreme pressure on chest

48. Full body itching, skin crawling sensations

49. Easily Bruising

50. Sleep apnea

51. Misaligned musculoskeletal system

52. Skin and nail discoloration, ingrown toenails

53. Hair loss

54. Enlarged lymph nodes

55. Sore throats

56. Immunocompromised

57. Hands involuntarily turning into claw shapes causing loss of function of hands and arms

58. Sciatica

59. Swelling

60. Difficulty speaking

Almost all of the symptoms/conditions above were severe, and putting them in list form doesn’t feel like it can even begin to encapsulate what it was like to live the way I did every day. So I’ve listed out some examples to give a little snapshot of what my daily life was like for years:

• For years I couldn’t go outside at all due to numerous physical symptoms. I left my apartment complex in January 2022 and couldn’t leave again until April 2025

• I often couldn’t open my blinds to see the sunlight

• I only had 3 foods I could barely eat, but I still tried again and again to add more foods to my diet with extreme reaction after extreme reaction

• In 2021 I had to give up my dog because I started having breathing issues around him, and even after he was out of the home I was still having breathing issues from the remnants of him in the home, so I had to abruptly move out of my home

• I not only couldn’t be around pets, but people had to make sure they didn’t have any pet fur on their clothes before coming into my home. I once had breathing issues from a tiny bit of dog fur on a friend’s sock

• In 2021, I spent months going to the hospital almost every day because of breathing issues, allergic reactions, and not being able to hold down food or water and needing IV nourishment to survive starvation/dehydration, until I was ultimately admitted to the hospital for 2 full months following this

• At one point while in the hospital for 2 months, my eyes bounced up and down so rapidly that I couldn’t distinguish facial expressions or see anything other than blurry indistinct spinning objects 24/7

• I couldn’t shower or use the restroom without assistance. I often could not walk to the restroom at all. I rarely showered, and if I was able to shower, that would be my one “extra” activity for the day and then I’d be bedridden again

• A slight trigger (like a slightly bright light or sound on tv) would trigger extreme migraines and I’d have to sit in the dark with no talking or sound for days or weeks

• I was often bedridden, and when I wasn’t bedridden I would take very slow challenging walks to the couch to sit there all day

• I couldn’t use most electronics - laptops, iPads, or newer phones without severe migraines or other symptoms within seconds of looking at the screen

• Almost everything that entered my home couldn’t have a scent or I would have reactions to it

• I couldn’t prepare my own food or do chores

• For years, at all times, I had at least 15 different symptoms or more on that list. There wasn’t a single minute for years when I didn’t have symptoms. There was no break from it. An average day was extreme suffering, but if I was in a flare up I would be barely surviving at times

• On special occasions like birthdays and holidays I would dress up and pose for pictures just so I would have some kind of record of the years that were passing, and by the end of taking those pictures I would have severe symptoms and be bedridden for days. People often thought I was healthy because I was posting pictures of me smiling, but they didn’t know the suffering that went on behind the scenes

• For awhile I could not listen to music at all

• For months my acid reflux was so severe it was overflowing out of my mouth at all times and I would have to spit and drool constantly during the day, or be drowning in it at night in my sleep

• I couldn’t be in a room for hours after it was vacuumed or else I would have breathing issues from dust

• I often couldn’t lift my arm to brush my own hair, or do other basic movements

• If a friend called me on the phone or came over to my home, I would often only be able to have a short conversation before I had too many symptoms to continue talking. I was much better at listening to them speak rather than having to talk, but even listening was sometimes too much information processing and would cause cognitive issues

• The presence of someone entering a room or tapping me on the shoulder could cause my body to go into shutdown

• I knew if I did certain things like eat chicken (one of the only foods I could eat at one point) it came at the cost of 6ish hours of severe brain fog

• I would often wake up gasping for air from sleep apnea, or wake up with my arms and legs completely numb

• I had to get jaw massages multiple times a week just to even eat puréed food because I could barely move my mouth from TMJ pain

• Most hobbies I tried to do to pass time I would have reactions to - breathing issues from little puzzle fibers, etc, or I wouldn’t be able to hold them to use them because of carpal tunnel

• Any hygiene products had to be special ordered - I had special shampoo, body wash, and toothpaste (my toothpaste was imported from another country). I couldn’t use deodorant, makeup, or so many other typical things a person might use

How did you find DNRS, did you believe it would help when you first began the program?

I went on a long journey of trial and error of researching and trying different things for years. I had gotten to the point of realising my symptoms all seemed neurological at their core (I thought I had actual nerve damage of some sort). I tried many methods of treatment over the years, with the last year prior to DNRS being aimed at treatment for nerve issues. The nerve treatments had incredibly slow and small progress that was negligible compared to DNRS. In August 2024, I had an ‘aha’ moment when I realized my brain was causing these symptoms (see next question for ‘aha’ moment)

My aunt told me about DNRS, and I didn’t understand what it was at first because she pitched it as a “mind-body program,” which with my medical trauma sounded like the gaslighting that doctors had done saying it was “all in my head” etc. But after this realisation that the problem wasn’t “in my head”, it was being caused by real problems in my brain, I researched DNRS more and started it. My aunt later elaborated and told me she knew people personally who DNRS had helped, so I knew it was legitimate.

When I started the program it seemed to explain everything that had ever happened to me the last few years, even the weird seemingly “impossible” symptoms I had been gaslit about. Within the first week of DNRS, I started having big positive shifts in my health, and I immediately felt that I had found the thing for me. However, I think it was still hard to fathom that it could truly cure me since something that big seemed unimaginable at the time. So I would say I believed in it in theory, but it was still hard to imagine the full extent to which it could change my life, since my life had been so bad for so long, and that was all I knew anymore.

But to be clear, up until that time right around starting DNRS, I never would’ve believed something like this could work. Throughout my whole life I held a lot of incorrect beliefs about mind-body stuff being fake, or that it was nice for simple stress relief, but nothing more than that. I think this is part of why I care so much about sharing my story in the hopes that it can help other people, because I never would’ve believed something like this exists and that healing is possible for so many things without any treatments, drugs, surgeries, etc.

What were the first shifts you noticed? Or any ‘aha’ moment when you realised this is what you needed?

Within 4 days after starting DNRS my energy had doubled, I was no longer bed-ridden, and my temperature started regulating for the first time. During the first week I also started feeling happy chemicals flooding my body for the first time in years. Shortly after that, other people started noticing there was colour and life coming back to my face. I experienced more changes in the first week than I did in months of the nerve treatments I was doing earlier in the year.

My ‘aha’ moment came before starting DNRS, and it is one of the things that made me realise I should seek out DNRS. I was going through a particularly extreme flare up that had lasted over a month - one of the worst months of my life. I was doing physical therapy for my jaw, which is what caused the bad flare up in the first place. The physical therapy exercise involved doing jaw exercises while biting down on a popsicle stick. Normally, when I experienced symptoms, the pattern would go: physical trigger > symptom (ie smoke > breathing issues; light > migraine). The popsicle stick exercise was what caused the month long flare up I was in. I decided I was finally ready to attempt the exercise again. I held up the popsicle stick in front of me and all of a sudden the severe physical symptoms started BEFORE I even physically put the popsicle stick in my mouth and started doing exercises. That was a massive ‘aha’ moment for me, because normally for years there had to be a physical trigger present to have a symptom, but this time my body was reacting with the exact same physical symptoms before the exercises had begun. That’s when I decided I needed to look at the brain’s role more closely, and I started DNRS shortly after.

I recall you telling me that in your first year of DNRS you didn’t skip a day of visualisations… AMAZING! What does your practice look like these days? What is your favourite tool for regulation?

My bread and butter of my healing has always been rounds and the other parts of the DNRS program. For me this also includes the laugh classes provided through DNRS. Since close to the beginning of starting the program, my symptoms reduced or sometimes melted away by the end of the 30 minute laugh classes. My #1 favorite tool for regulation is rounds. From the very beginning I was so surprised how something so simple could be the most effective thing I’ve ever experienced in my life, better than any drug or treatment I’ve ever tried.

In recent months I have been a little less stringent on getting all 4 rounds in every day. If I’m too busy living life to get all 4 in, I am much more gentle and accepting of myself, and I remind myself having fulfilling days and doing new things is also healing to my brain. But I still do 4 rounds as many days as possible.

I lean into my intuition for what else feels supportive in the moment. When I have time I do Lee Holden’s Qi Gong 30 day challenge. For a few months last year I did Qi Gong every single day. It is only 7 minutes a day, so regulating and healing, and specifically helped get rid of the 24/7 painful electricity in my body.

Lately, I have been trying to do more of Joe Dispenza’s “The Formula” meditation. I don’t usually have time to do that AND rounds, or else I would do it so much more. I find Joe Dispenza’s meditations to be incredibly impactful, and at times it has been drastically transformative to my body mid-meditation. Lastly, I recently started working with Tessa Malcarne, an independent nervous system regulation/rewiring coach. I have been working with her to support my rewiring of some of the remaining underlying emotional issues.

How did you motivate yourself at the start when daily symptoms were debilitating? Do you have a favourite mantra?

The beginning was very challenging. I didn’t even know how I would stand up for 15 minutes at a time for rounds, because for years I wasn’t able to stand that long. But the rounds themselves created the strength and energy for me to stand that long for the first time in years. Even when it was hard physically or emotionally, I was so motivated to do every round because I knew that was the one thing that would make me feel better in the moment and in the long run. Sometimes I would feel so awful I didn’t think I could make it to laugh class, but I would go anyway because I had experienced many symptoms reducing or going away completely just by doing the class. I knew doing rounds and going to these classes were my way out of the situation I was in. I said for years while I was sick: “if I ever find the thing that will get me better, just tell me what it is and I’ll do it, I don’t care what it takes.” And I meant that.

Something that helped me on difficult days is that I tried to emphasise that every day is a new day and a fresh start, as well as what Laura from DNRS says: “every day in every way better and better.” I would try to feel the truth of these statements and implement them into my life. Even if I had a rough day, the next day was a new day, and I went into it with the mindset that every single day would bring growth. People in DNRS talk about how change can happen overnight, or even in a single moment, so one of my frequent affirmations was “I leave open the idea that amazing growth and change can happen every single day.” I would also remind myself that as long as I did the work, my brain was being rewired every day, and therefore the trajectory of my healing was always going forward, no matter how I felt in the moment.

What does your life look like now? What changes have you experienced in your symptoms?

I am still in the process of rewiring and healing, but my life doesn’t look the way it used. The idea of still not being 100% recovered after 1.5 years might have scared me at first if I knew that, but the amount of change that has taken place every month of this journey has been dramatic and life-changing. Every single thing on the above list of symptoms/conditions has either gone away completely or significantly reduced. I do not experience most of the things on that list anymore. I am still working through some of them, but it’s just not even close to how they used to feel, and most importantly I am participating in life again.

I went from not attending a single social event from June 2021-May 2025, to attending almost every big social event I’ve been invited to since May 2025. I went to two weddings, a friend’s baby shower, multiple birthday parties, as well as my own 30th birthday party. I finally got to support my friend in person by going to her stand up comedy show. I planned and attended my brother’s baby shower. I got to meet my brother’s baby right after she was born, and I have babysat her many times since. I’ve done fun things like bowling, swimming, playing in the splash pad at the park, Topgolf, arcades, and gambling at a casino. I went to a beautiful hilltop nature getaway last month and got to enjoy listening to the birds, watching the sunrises and sunsets, and being in nature. I have no sound sensitivity anymore and almost no light sensitivity anymore. I never ever need to live in the dark or quiet anymore - my life is filled with sunlight, lights, and music.

I don’t have any electronics limitations anymore - I have an upgraded phone, I’ve been drawing and learning to animate on my iPad, and I use my laptop all the time. I don’t need assistance for any of the basic activities I did before like showering etc. I can cook, bake, clean, talk as much as I want, and I use whatever products I want to use. I went from having only 3 foods I could eat, to eating whatever I want within 2 months of starting DNRS. I often forget I ever couldn’t eat food because it’s so normal for me to eat now.

I get to be around pets again, and DNRS also cured my 20 year cat allergy that pre-dated my actual sickness. I was even reunited with the dog I had to give up when I started getting sick in 2021 because of the breathing issues I had around him. Two months ago I moved to a new home, and I’ve spent the last two months decorating and finally feeling like I have a home again, instead of the last place that felt like a prison that I was stuck in for years.

A year ago, I experienced a loss in my family, and I grieved and moved through it smoother and healthier than I moved through any of the many previous losses in my life. I struggled with suicidal ideation much of my life on and off, particularly while being sick, but I have only had 2 brief fleeting thoughts of suicidal ideation in the 1.5 years since I started recovering with DNRS. Overall, since I started DNRS, I’ve been in the best mental health state that I have been in my whole life, with a positive outlook for the first time in my life.

What has been the most meaningful win for you so far?

I’m going to cheat and choose 3 wins that all have different meanings to me:

My first outing outside of my apartment complex in over 3 years was a root canal at the dentist. Over the months leading up to it, I could feel the symptoms that kept me from going places drastically decreasing. I still wasn’t at the point of healing that I would have preferred to have to do that, but it had to happen ready or not. It ended up giving me so much progress and opening up more opportunities for other outings after that. I am proud of that first outing that was very terrifying, very challenging, but ultimately exactly what I needed. Prior to that first outing in 3+ years, I couldn’t even remember what it was like to be anywhere else aside from my home. I remember turning onto the freeway on the way to the dentist and a lightbulb turning on in my head, where I could finally remember glimpses of what it felt like to live life again. Also, I even went back to the dentist successfully two more times after that first outing.

Getting to go places again came just in time for the birth of my niece. I planned and hosted my brother’s baby shower at his home, and I was able to meet and hold my niece after she was born. When my brother told me that he was having a baby, I hadn’t even been out of my apartment complex yet. I was hopeful that by the time my niece was born I would have improved enough to go out and be part of her life. And I was able to. I’m so grateful to be part of her life, and to be able to help support my brother and his partner in this new era of parenthood.

Lastly, a very fun and meaningful win for me was my 30th birthday party a few months ago. I threw a 2000’s themed nostalgic costume party, with 50 attendees, karaoke, and dancing. It was full of lights and music and tons of things I could not have been around the last few years. I felt like my old social butterfly self floating around the party enjoying myself. I felt so present and so alive. I also used this party to have a mini law school graduation, because I missed my graduation while being sick. I finished law school in 2020, and the rest of my class had a delayed graduation in 2021, but I was already too sick to attend by that point. So at my 30th birthday party, I got dressed up in my cap and gown, played the graduation song, and had a professor from my law school come to do the mini-ceremony. It was such a special and beautifully emotional moment. I never thought I would be able to have a celebration like that again. I dreamed up the theme of that party while bedridden years ago as a way to remember better nostalgic times with hope of a better future. It was incredible that my dream came true.

What piece of wisdom would you share with the version of you from a few years ago?

I would tell myself that there is a whole untapped world of brain rewiring and nervous system regulation that can treat and cure a large variety of illnesses. I would tell myself it’s not my fault I was sick, that I know I did everything I could, and it’s not my fault that I didn’t know brain rewiring exists, western medicine doesn’t teach about it. I would explain what mind-body work really means, and DNRS (and other programs like it) do not mean it in the triggering and false way that gaslighting doctors and other people do. I would tell myself that there is hope, and just because the doctors say they have nothing for you, that doesn’t mean that’s all that’s out there. I would tell myself not to listen to chronic illness areas of social media that told me once you have a chronic illness that it is permanent. It doesn’t have to be that way. Most people simply do not have the information and tools, because brain rewiring isn’t mainstream yet, so no one teaches us about it.

I would thank myself for keeping going, even when I was told there was no hope. The girl who struggled to breathe, nearly starved to death, begged doctors to help her as they mocked her, and spent every day just barely making it through the day is the same girl who created the beautiful life I live now of throwing parties, making my niece laugh with silly dance moves, and watching sunrises and sunsets at a hilltop cabin, whilst enjoying a charcuterie board. It was only because I kept going that I could heal and become the person I am today (and the person I’m excited to be when I reach full recovery). I would tell myself that I deserve love and joy and a good life, and that I would have all of that again

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This is an edit of a post I wrote for my blog back in June 2024. However, it’s one of my favourite posts, and I absolutely had to share it here. This is a realisation I made back in 2024, and I still wholeheartedly believe in it.

In the brain retraining program DNRS, one of the core practices involves visualising a colour moving through the body. Initially, this was a part of my practice that I didn’t pay much attention to. I recall when I first started doing my DNRS practice, I would imagine a colour flooding my body, but I was just going through the motions, I couldn’t actually FEEL anything. I also spent barely any time on this part of the visualisation.

As my practice has developed and with time, this process of pulling colour through my body has intensified. Now, as I describe a colour moving through me, I can truly feel it in my body. Along with this colour, I experience a feeling that is difficult to describe. A state of softness, peace and ease. Feelings of warmth, lightness and joy. A deep knowing and trust in my body. A feeling of surrender and connection to my true self. Over time, I’ve come to recognise this is the healing state.

I have been seeing an amazing holistic psychologist, aka ‘spiritual mama’, and we do a lot of meditations and inner inquiry where we work on connecting with my body and basking in that feeling. She describes it to me as the healing energy state.

Joe Dispenza speaks about this too. In Becoming Supernatural he talks about this healing energy and how we can direct it. I have spent some time completing his ‘Blessing of the Energy Centres‘ meditation, which involves directing this energy through parts of the body. When I do my DNRS visualisations, I often do a ‘mini’ version of this. After each visualisation, when I am pulling the colour through my body, I focus on bringing it through each chakra or energy centre.

From a biological standpoint, this is an elevated emotional state associated with DOSE chemistry: the release of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins in the body.

Candace Pert’s book Molecules of Emotion explores the biological underpinnings of this idea in far greater depth. I highly recommend this book; it is one of my favourites. She was a ground-breaking neuroscientist and pharmacologist, and she describes these ‘molecules of emotion’, (a kind of neuropeptide) as having the ability to change the chemistry of all cells in the body, or ‘our own endogenous drugs’.

I love this quote: ‘Each of us has his or her own natural pharmacopoeia — the very finest drugstore available at the cheapest cost — to produce all the drugs we ever need to run our bodymind in precisely the way it was designed to run over centuries of evolution.’ When I visualise colour moving through my body, I feel that I am doing exactly that, directing my body to self-heal using the innate wisdom that only it knows. (Or as Candace Pert calls it, my ‘bodymind’, these two are so innately connected that you can’t consider one without the other)

Interestingly, when I was travelling in Japan, I attended a Zen breathing course that taught techniques passed down by a Japanese Rinzai Zen master. I bought a poster there and in one section it describes visualising a ‘healing butter’ moving through the body (pictured above). I love when different healing modalities or spiritual philosophies arrive at similar conclusions. Different traditions use different languages to describe the same phenomenon. Some might call it Qi or energy, while others explain it through neuroscience.

In recent months, I have started pulling colour through my body when I experience anything positive and see beautiful things whilst out and about in the world. It has become an ingrained habit now, especially when I am witnessing nature. I will sit and bask in appreciation, gratitude, awe and pull a colour through my body.

Over time, I have noticed this feeling intensify, which has made me more motivated to keep myself in that state. This has allowed me to reach another level of surrender and has given me a deeper knowing that my body is self-healing.

I am also able to ‘switch’ the feeling on with more ease and the emotions that accompany it are strengthening. I have noticed that as soon as I start my DNRS rounds this feeling switches on automatically (I am becoming Pavlov’s Dog, if he was fed a diet of visualisations). I can also tell when I am not in that state and my goal has been to keep it in that state as long as I can throughout my day. Of course, living in the modern world, this can be difficult. But the more I do this, the more I know my body keeps healing.

I am excited to continue exploring this and to see if I can learn to direct it to very specific parts of the body and deepen the feeling even more. I have also noticed that a regular Qigong practice allows this shift in my body to occur more easily.

Of course, I have come to realise it’s not really about the colour at all. The colour is simply a doorway into the emotion. And emotion, in turn, becomes the doorway into shifting the body’s internal state. Perhaps this is where neuroplasticity and spirituality meet, and it’s all a lesson in consciousness — thoughts for another post perhaps. This simple tool is a great reminder that we have the power within to cultivate and influence our internal state.

For those practising brain retraining, the colour is simply a helpful tool. It gives the mind something tangible to focus on while the body learns how to access that feeling again.

Some tips if you’re starting:

• You have to go through the motions, and with time and repetition the brain will learn and the nervous system will relax and allow you to connect more with the body. Even if it feels mechanical imagining it, keep repeating it, eventually you will truly feel the colour and emotion in your body.

• Practice your descriptions, describe the feeling with as many descriptive words as you can. Here are some examples:

  • ‘I feel a soft, golden light coming up through the bottom of my feet, filling them with golden warmth. It feels like Tinkerbell’s fairy dust and it’s floating gently through my feet, slowly moving up through my legs spreading a magical feeling of calm, peace, softness and cosiness…”

  • ‘I feel a soft, blossom pink in my heart space. It fills up my heart with peace, love and tenderness. This soft pink starts to gently emanate out into my entire chest, it feels like a cloudy, pastel sunrise and it fills my heart space with a peaceful, calming pink energy, before swelling, growing in love and intensity, then gently spreading further out into my body, taking loving energy into every cell it passes through…

  • ‘A soft blue colour, just like the ocean comes washing through my body, down through my head, undulating down gently through my neck and into my heart space, filling it with a calming, serene blue energy. This blue energy moves like the ocean, gently passing through my body like a wave, it swirls in my chest, filling it up, then gently shifts further down into my tummy…’

• Choose any colour, whatever resonates with you. I use ‘golden light’ probably 95% of the time, as I have continued my practice, new colours have been coming to me. I love blue for the ocean and green after nature visualisations, I also often do a soft blend of ‘sunrise’ colours.

_{Note: My blog may contain some affiliate links. I will be paid a commission if you use this link to make a purchase at no extra cost to you. I only link to products or programs I have personally used}

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I believe healing occurs when we can surrender and accept that the brain will change as long as we continue showing up consistently. I also know the power of a recovery story in allowing us to trust and surrender. This is my journey.

In summarising this, I am in awe of my commitment and dedication. In the people I have seen heal using mind-body work the common thread is always consistency. Those who show up every day and do the work heal. I haven’t met anybody dedicated to this work who hasn’t experienced profound shifts in their health.

Everyone has a different path and it doesn’t have to look like mine. Had I read this when I first started brain retraining, I probably would have been frustrated by the time it has taken. Now I am in a place where I know I am truly healing from the inside out and it will take however long it needs to. I hope that for those early in their journey, it gives a bit of hope.

Early 2022

In 2022 I went to Germany for medical treatment. At the time, I had a friend who had returned from the same treatment tell me that she got more benefit from The Gupta Program. I didn’t really believe that and thought the positive effects she had experienced must have been a delayed effect from her time in Germany. However, I purchased the program and half-heartedly gave it a go.

The program itself looked good, but I had zero motivation and didn’t believe it would help me. I thought that by doing the program, I was gaslighting myself and confirming the assertions of dismissive doctors who, early in my health journey, told me my illness was all in my head. I couldn’t find any consistency and six months later I still hadn’t finished watching the videos.

October 2022

I watched an online talk that my integrative doctor’s clinic ran with someone sharing their recovery from chronic illness using brain retraining. She mentioned DNRS and the Our Power Is Within podcast. The similarity of her symptoms to mine and the way she explained the science of brain retraining meant something finally clicked for me, I decided I needed to give it a go. I felt a particular pull towards the DNRS program. At this time, I had regressed in my health due to a concussion, which I am so thankful for now. It was my blessing in disguise that made me desperate enough to make a true change.

I did my first DNRS rounds in October 2022 (rounds are a type of visualisation technique taught in the DNRS program). For six months after this, I only skipped one day. I completely and totally devoted myself to brain retraining. I did one hour of rounds per day, sometimes two hours. I joined three to four laughter yoga classes per week, joined DNRS extra classes once per week, had accountability buddies and WhatsApp groups that helped me stay accountable and did buddy rounds with others to help motivate myself. I started reading recommended books on neuroplasticity such as How to Break the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza and The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. I was very diligent about changing thought patterns centred on illness.

I worked with my neuroplasticity coach Tessa Malcarne during this time, usually at least once a month. I read the DNRS forum almost daily to keep myself motivated and to continue trusting and believing that if I showed up consistently, my symptoms would shift.

About two months in, I started to notice my sensitivity to smell improving. About three months in, I noticed a softening in my severe brain and cognitive issues. At the four to six-month mark, I had big shifts in my fatigue. This gave me a lot of motivation to continue dedicating myself to brain retraining.

January 2023

After a few months of following DNRS, I added in some Qi Gong. I had previously completed a short course but had never practised consistently. I started doing this video between rounds. These took my rounds to a whole new level and allowed my body to reach a truly elevated state of being. Ever since then, I have been obsessed with Qi Gong. I believe it had a profound impact on my healing.

At this point, I started to experience incredible shifts in my energy. I had moments where I went from averaging 2k steps a day to 10k steps a day. I was waking up with more energy and ease, with less heaviness and malaise.

April 2023

Around this time, I discovered JournalSpeak and started to work through the program. However, at this early stage of my recovery, I found it too much for me. It pushed my brain back towards a negativity bias and I would spiral after journaling. I put this practice aside, knowing I would return to it later.

I also started using the app BrainHQ to support neuroplasticity and improve my brain function.

A big milestone was having my portacath removed, for 4 years prior I had been reliant on this for IV treatment that I believed I needed to survive. I was no longer taking any herbs, antibiotics or treatments aimed at reducing infections. This signalled a shift in my belief system, I could truly see I didn’t have chronic infections, but had an impaired limbic system.

July 2023

In mid 2023, I had more capacity in my nervous system and a lot more motivation. I felt a desire to start using some more bottom-up tools, this was when I started the Primal Trust program. Over the next six months, I very slowly worked through the Primal Trust videos, adding in tools like breathwork, eye exercises and brain attunements. I was still doing rounds one hour per day around 90% of the time.

I also moved out of home, began socialising more and had more capacity for living. I remember going back to my first Pilates class in September. It was the first exercise class I had done in nine years. A lot of shifts were continuing to happen and my motivation to continue with brain retraining and nervous system regulation was very high. I still had ups and downs during this time and dips as my nervous system continued to learn safety.

October 2023

I started seeing a somatic practitioner/holistic psychologist and worked on facing some emotions. This was slow and steady, with monthly sessions where we gradually opened up and released stored emotions. By then, I had built more capacity in my nervous system to integrate this work.

November 2023

I went on my first solo trip to Japan. It was an incredible testament to all the brain retraining I had done. While I was away, I rarely did my rounds, with some quick gratitude journaling into my phone most nights. Most days I was walking 20k steps, I went hiking and even did a full-day biking tour that brought me so much joy. I ate foods I hadn’t touched in years, like gluten and dairy, and had nights out with new friends where for the first time in ten years, I felt free from illness. I realised I was capable of far more than I had thought. This was a huge milestone in my recovery.

January 2024

During this six-month patch, I was very dedicated. I would do one to two hours of nervous system regulation practice per morning. I wouldn’t let myself turn my phone on until I had done my practices and heavily reduced my screen time. I had a morning routine of Rosenberg Technique then breathwork: mantra breathing then voo breathing, with breath holds in between. After this I would finish with the Kirtan Kriya meditation. I recall I did a four month streak of Kirtan Kriya. I’d usually do all this before getting out of bed. Later in the morning I would follow this with one hour of rounds. Every night, I wrote a one page gratitude journal and fell asleep listening to affirmations. I was still participating in 3-4 laughter yoga classes each week and some of the extra DNRS group classes for motivation as well. I also did an online Feldenkrais class for a few months. I truly immersed my brain in new pathways. (I’m very proud of myself when I look back!)

During this time, I also worked through Primal Trust Level Two and became more spiritually focused. I stopped thinking about symptoms altogether and focused more on finding stillness and peace in my mind. The more I did this, the more my symptoms naturally dissipated. It wasn’t easy. My limbic system resisted (as detailed in a post below), and my thoughts grew louder before they quietened, but I persisted.

I was starting to wake up at sunrise, increase movement and do lots of walking and ocean swimming. I did a lot of grounding and sunrise swims, increasing my time in the morning sun to boost my vitamin D levels with a focus on my circadian rhythm and light hygiene. I did an online coding course to challenge my brain. My health continued to improve in all areas. I went on a trip to Tasmania with my mum where we did a long hike at Wineglass Bay.

June 2024

I went travelling to Europe for a few months to visit my sisters. I stopped doing my rounds as consistently but still focused a lot on changing my thought patterns, being present, Qi Gong, yoga, meditation and breathwork. I had a lot of wins on this trip. A lot of long hikes, days spent meandering around cities, I also went to a one-week yoga retreat and did some surfing lessons.

Mid to late 2024

I made more progress with my somatic practitioner and started processing deeper emotions. I began using JournalSpeak again, the Ho’oponopono Prayer and worked on actually processing the trauma of my health journey. There were a lot of difficult patches during this time, with a lot of grief intermingled with the joy of being out in the world again.

I was going to Pilates and yoga a few times a week and completing a lot of longer walks, alongside swimming in the ocean most days. I did DNRS rounds probably 70% of the time. My life was getting busier with more socialising, working and being out in the world. I travelled to Taiwan towards the end of the year, which expanded my capacity even more.

2025

This was the year I started working longer hours again, on average thirty hours per week, including full days in a clinic working 8:30 am to 7 pm! This changed my practice a lot. I probably did rounds about 30% of the time. By now, I had a lot of tools in my toolbox and would mix and choose them depending on the day. Some days I did rounds, some days I did JournalSpeak, some days I did Qi Gong, yoga or Faster EFT tapping. I focused a lot on longer Joe Dispenza meditations and worked through the Joe Dispenza Progressive Online Course. I started using the OOV consistently (more about that here), continued with my spiritual practice and working with my somatic practitioner.

At times, I felt a little bit like the zen monk who meditates in the mountains and then comes down to the village and yells at everyone (I’m exaggerating a little there…). A lot of my learning was now focused on bringing nervous system regulation into a busier lifestyle. Yes, I could achieve calm by doing rounds in the safety and quiet of home, but could I also teach my body that there wasn’t a tiger around while working on an Excel spreadsheet with a quick turnaround? Could I stand up for myself if someone was being unkind, without being afraid of confrontation?

My main focus became practising how to incorporate the feeling that rounds bring into my everyday life. Teaching my nervous system that it was safe in new and varied situations and bringing a feeling of presence into my day. I also tried to incorporate practices into daily life rather than needing to block out hours for them. For example, listening to Primal Trust Brain Attunements on the bus to work or listening to affirmations when walking.

I had some dips, but they were less intense and I could still go to work and keep up my daily commitments. I found I could surrender and accept without getting frustrated, knowing my nervous system was continuing to learn safety and recalibrate.

One big win was a shift in my hormones and more ease during my cycle. This was a significant improvement on years prior. My brain function improved immensely throughout the year, with greater focus. My energy also continued to expand and improve. One of my favourite activities in 2025 was learning to freedive, this felt like a huge physical win!

2026

At the start of this year, I would like to return to doing rounds more intensively again to elevate my practice and take my health to the next level. I also feel a calling to develop my Qi Gong practice. I am also committing to the Primal Trust 40 Day Regulate challenge. I now have an extensive toolkit of nervous system regulation practices to choose from and variety helps me a lot.

I noticed some thought patterns started to creep back in towards the end of 2025, and I am working on pruning away these limiting beliefs to continue elevating my healing. I want to be more radical in changing these thought patterns, reminding myself I have unlimited potential. Again, I am finding balance between working, living and dedicating myself to my practices. I think there are times for living and doing less and there are patches where being more consistent and dedicated allows my health to expand. Stay tuned…

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After almost a decade healing from severe chronic health conditions, including chronic fatigue that left me bed and housebound, the tool that has had the biggest impact on my recovery has been visualisations.

If you had told me this a few years ago, I would have laughed in your face. It’s wild that the most effective treatment for me has also been the cheapest and something as unassuming as visualising.

I truly believe it is one of the most underrated and powerful tools for healing, especially when it comes to rewiring the brain and regulating the nervous system. I started doing visualisations when I began DNRS (Dynamic Neural Retraining System). DNRS teaches a specific type of visualisation technique called a “round”. When I started the program, I did rounds for one hour per day for two years, rarely skipping a day. Whilst I can’t share their specific technique, I have written more about the program in general here.

My aim with visualisations is always to be as vivid as possible. I move through all the senses and use the present tense. Standing and moving around a little elevates them for me. I visualise the past to help my brain remember safety from lived experiences, and I also imagine future scenarios to teach my brain what it is capable of.

It has been incredibly rewarding to have visualisations come true. The image accompanying this post is from a specific hike near Tokyo that I started visualising around 6 months before my trip to Japan. I have since had countless visualisations come to life and the feeling is incredible (it’s also funny when the location itself looks quite different to my imagination!).

I had a break from consistent visualisations in the past few months and am now committing to a regular practice again. They are such a powerful tool for me and already I can feel the positive effects of that commitment. I know that being consistent with them will continue taking my health to another level. Here are some reasons why I believe visualisations are one of the most powerful tools for chronic illness recovery.

Rehearsing teaches the brain safety

The brain does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. In chronic illness, the brain has learned to see certain stimuli such as mould, chemicals or even movement as a threat. When we rehearse being around these ‘threats’ and visualise ourselves as safe in their imagined presence, we can take control of the situation and teach the brain how we want it to respond.

The first time I noticed the power of this in action was when I was driving and feeling much calmer and more relaxed. Driving had been a source of anxiety for me and I had done a lot of visualisations of myself driving with ease. I recall driving one day with a passenger and realising how much more relaxed I was, despite not actually having driven much in real life in the period before that.

I also had moments where I suddenly had much more capacity for movement after doing a lot of visualisations involving exercise. I truly believe my brain perceived movement as a threat and rehearsing it mentally allowed my brain to undo that association.

Changes neural networks

It is not just about having a better attitude towards movement or other triggers. Visualisations can actually change the structure and function of your brain.

Studies show that neural networks in the brain can be changed by thought alone. Functional MRI scans show that when a person visualises a movement, the same areas of the brain light up as when they physically do it¹. There is one study where volunteers imagined contracting a muscle for several weeks, whilst another group did real contractions. The group doing mental rehearsal increased their strength by 13.5 percent versus the real group which increased by 30 percent². The book The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge taught me a lot about the power of thought and how we can utilise neuroplasticity for healing.

By doing visualisations, we are teaching safety by physically changing the brain.

Visualisations unwire symptoms

If symptoms are the result of a cross-wiring in the brain, then visualisations are the tool to change this wiring. For example, sensitivity to mould is the result of the brain perceiving mould as a threat and sending symptoms to alert you to its presence, even when exposed to a non-threatening amount of mould (I have explained this in more detail here). To uncross these neural networks, we can use visualisations to teach the brain new associations and turn off this false alarm.

One of the first symptoms that improved for me with brain rewiring was my sensitivity to smell. I did a lot of visualisations of myself around different chemical smells and not reacting. These visualisations allowed my brain to stop seeing these smells as threats.

I know a lot of people who do general nervous system work and experience improvements. However, some symptoms stay stuck. I truly believe that using targeted visualisation work is often the missing link that allows deeper healing to occur. You can do all the yoga and breathwork you want, but if you are consciously responding to symptoms with the same thought patterns, and keeping the same neural networks firing, healing is limited. Visualisation is a way to begin to change this wiring.

Elevate emotions

I love visualisations as they are one of the best ways I have found for elevating emotions. One of the key tenets of the brain retraining programs DNRS and Primal Trust is emotional elevation. When we experience uplifting emotions like joy, peace and love, this signals safety to the nervous system and allows it to move into a parasympathetic state. When we are rewiring associations, new pathways in the brain are embedded more deeply when an elevated emotion is involved in the process.

I did a lot of visualisations of events where I was experiencing uplifting emotions. In the end, my brain became like Pavlov’s dog and as soon as I started a DNRS round I would feel elevated. Being in this state is when healing happens. I have written more about it here. For me personally, rounds allow me to achieve emotional elevation more than meditation and other tools.

They reveal and change subconscious beliefs

This is one of the biggest things I have noticed from visualisations. When I do a visualisation of something I am working towards or have not yet achieved, at times a little voice in the back of my head will pop up and say, “You can’t do that, Alex.” When I notice this voice, I know I have struck gold.

Noticing this allows me to see the subconscious thought patterns and limiting beliefs that are holding me back. For example, early on in my rewiring journey I began doing shorter-term visualisations where I had improved physical capacity in the near future. A voice would say, “Keep dreaming, you won’t be doing that anytime soon.” I would then repeat the rounds until that discomfort and disbelief eventually melted away. With repetition, the brain has no choice but to change. In doing this, we are using the conscious mind to reprogram subconscious beliefs. When we truly believe in a higher truth, the body has no choice but to follow.

I believe that finding and then reprogramming these subconscious thoughts is key to healing. For me, repeated visualisations have been a powerful way to do this.

More present with thought patterns

I find that committing to visualisations makes me much more aware of the thought patterns I carry throughout the day and helps me redirect them more effectively. When I do the full hour of visualisations, I am able to bring more awareness and presence to the rest of my day. It can also highlight areas where unhelpful thought patterns have crept in.

If I have a specific pattern I am working on rewiring, I can also address it directly in my visualisations. For example, if I want to remove unhelpful beliefs around exercise, I visualise myself feeling confident and strong while working out. When I do this, I notice I become more aware of limiting beliefs later in the day and better able to interrupt them.

They allow me to feel unlimited

Visualisations make me feel truly unlimited in my potential. I love using Canva and Pinterest to make visualisation boards and then stepping into those visions. It allows me to push the boundaries of who I want to be and how I want to show up in the world. Do you not want to be afraid of public speaking? Visualise it. Want to show up with more confidence? Visualise it. Fancy yourself as a yoga teacher even though you identify as introverted? Visualise it.

I believe that if I can imagine something, I can become it. I like to push myself beyond my comfort zone within the safety of a controlled visualisation. This gives me confidence as I return to the world.

Final thoughts

Visualisation is much more than thinking positively. It is a neurological tool for retraining and rewiring the brain towards healing. I cannot recommend it enough and it has truly done wonders for my recovery. It is a tool I know I will return to for the rest of my life.

^_Sources

_{1 - Decety, J., Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 1996}

_{2 - Yue & Cole, Journal of Neurophysiology, 2004}

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It’s a place where seeing someone walk down the street with a handpan strapped to their back is the norm, and nobody bats an eyelid when someone hosts a Zoom call on ‘Stepping into the Masculine’ at a cafe table next to you (this actually happened to me). All of this is intermingled with the local Balinese people with their big smiles and kindness. My homestay host peeled me local fruit to try on arrival, and when I said I love mangosteen she brought more to me the next day. When you walk down the street you pass countless temples and you have to make sure you don’t step on the offerings of flowers, incense and rice that are laid out daily. I visited during a festival so the streets were filled with music played by groups of young men, the sound of drums lulling me to sleep.

I first visited Ubud eleven years ago when Yoga Barn had one shala, the streets were more peaceful and there were many more rice fields. I was unsure if I would like it when I went back. I like quiet places and peace. Sometimes the overtly spiritual can feel too much for me. At the same time, I have been known to unironically text friends, “I think my sacral chakra opened mid yoga class,” so I knew I had to go back to Ubud. Here’s what I got up to as someone into nervous system regulation, health, wellness and mind-body work.

Thank you to my dear friend Gloria, a coach and somatic guide, who gave me a lot of these recommendations.

Local Shaman Reading

This was a fun activity. I felt like I was having my own Eat Pray Love moment. I’ve never done anything like this before and I went in with an open mind and heart. It was located out of the city and I had to get a lift on a motorbike to a meeting point and then ride another half hour in a car to the temple. As I sat in the car watching the rice fields go by, I did laugh at myself and the adventures I take myself on.

Soon I was seated on a cushion outside a temple with the shaman. She was an older woman with greying hair and a calm demeanour. She had me sit in front of her and closed her eyes as she tuned into my energy, then she read my palms and used my birthday to make some calculations. I watched as she scribbled in her notebook under where I had written my name and birthday. I also couldn’t help but sneak a look at the names and birthdays written above mine. Was she scribbling more for me? Was my reading the best she had done? Were our scribbles the same? She was very gentle and self-assured as she spoke in Balinese to a translator.

I went into this with an open mind. I know we are energetic beings and believe that there are people who are more in tune with energies and are able to read them. At the same time, I know that only I know my path and I am not reliant on another to tell me what to do. I was very impressed with some things that came up that felt very specific for me. I sat there with my eyes wide and heart open, taking it all in with an element of surprise in her ability to read me. I won’t share all of the things she told me as many were quite personal, but there was a lot that resonated.

One thing she focused on was telling me that I had a lot of wisdom to share to help other people. She also said I have the charisma and intelligence to be able to share those things and that this is my task in this lifetime. Recently I have been trying to focus on sharing my health recovery as I know I have almost a decade of experience to share and knowledge that can transform the lives of those suffering like I once did. I know I hold myself back from doing this and I am unsure why. As she reiterated her message the quote by Marianne Williamson came to mind, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” I already know my path and what I need to do, but perhaps I needed someone outside of me to confirm that and quieten the little voices in the back of my mind.

Interestingly, I felt inspired to create content on Instagram after this session and it went viral, bringing in over a thousand new followers (hello and welcome to any of you reading this). I also received more than twenty direct messages asking about my brain retraining journey and recovery, including one from an artist with over 20 million followers. It felt like a little reminder from the universe that I am on the right path.

She also shared that I still carry a lot of hurt and trauma in my body which I couldn’t help but link to my experience with health. She said she sensed this as the colours she read in my energy were out of balance, “too much red going into the blue”. She told me to make sure I am not suppressing these emotions and to slowly heal them by feeling them with time. She also spoke about doing sun meditations in the morning, and focusing on being kind to myself and how the joy from that will dissipate the hurt parts, even without actively having to bring them up.

Lately, when I am on the right path, I feel this calmness in my nervous system and a true connection to myself. Maybe that is my intuition guiding me. Throughout my visit with her I felt this.

I do wonder how much I interpreted what she said to suit my desires or to confirm what I already knew. She also told me that a lot of abundance awaits me (the term “pot of gold” was used, which made me giggle). I did wonder if they ever tell people they are destined for financial struggle. I’ve come a long way on my spiritual journey but the little sceptic in me still likes to pop out here and there.

For anyone else interested, a link to the place I booked through is here. If you Whatsapp Lu she will organise the visit for you.

Himalayan Kriya Yoga at Radiantly Alive Yoga Studio

This was a recommendation from my friend Gloria. I had never even heard of Himalayan Kriya yoga before and didn’t know what to expect. This class was amazing and like nothing I have ever done before. We did a lot of chanting, breathwork and poses as we worked through cleansing each chakra. There was a lot of Kali breathing, a deep breath where you stick out your tongue to purge negative energy, as well as Ujayi or Ocean breath as well. Everyone in class was very into the process, there was no shame in looking silly and I was able to really get into it. It was actually a lot of fun expressing myself in that way, it felt quite freeing. A lot of my nervous system work has focused on building capacity and resilience in my body and it was nice to try a practice that was more activating.

One of the poses we did was a pineal gland detox mudra. I could feel an incredible amount of energy moving through my brain when I did this, it blew my mind a little! There is a video here demonstrated by the teacher whose class I went to. If you scroll her profile you will get a better idea of what is involved in a Himalayan Kriya yoga class.

After my first session I went home and had a VERY disturbed night of sleep. A lot of nightmares and waking up with a racing heart. The instructor explained that this means some deeply held emotions are moving out of the body.

I took this class at a beautiful studio called Radiantly Alive. I did a few classes here and they were excellent, it was my favourite studio in Ubud. I especially loved the Yin and Traditional Chinese Medicine class.

Qi Gong and Quantum Flow Classes

As devoted readers of my blog will know, I am in love with Qi Gong. This alongside my DNRS rounds was a game changer in my recovery. I have only ever practised using videos online and was very excited to go to an in-person class at Yoga Barn. The instructor, Jordie Jules, was excellent and it truly reignited my love for Qi Gong. I highly recommend.

Going to an in person class allowed me to get into the movements more, and brought a different level of focus. I always feel Qi moving through my arms and hands when I practice at home, but this was eveb more intense in person

I also did one of Jordie’s Quantum Flow classes. This was a dynamic movement-based flow that had a Joe Dispenza feel to it. It combined movement with meditation and visualisations, and ended in dance. I enjoyed experimenting with this, and seeing how the neuroplasticity principles I have been studying the last few years can be expressed in different ways. (Perhaps some of these classes could be a substitute for visualisation for anyone on a brain retraining journey).

Energy Healing Massage

I went to an energy healing massage at a place called MAAPUN after seeing reviews on Google. The healer I saw was an interesting man to chat to. He told me he had been a healer since his early twenties and that his parents had also been healers. He said he had learnt how to channel energy to heal others without depleting his own and gave me tips for cultivating this. As he moved around my body he spoke a lot about how my stomach needed more support. He then did the most intense massage of my life. It was very manual and deep. I almost kicked him at one stage because it hurt so much. He also moved my body into many different positions to stretch out different areas. At one point he jumped on my back and pulled me up into a reverse boat pose! He also spoke a lot about moving cerebrospinal fluid for good health and gave me exercises to do at home for that, mostly happy baby and variations of happy baby.

He had an interesting understanding of the body. For example, I had an ear infection from diving that was healing when I saw him. He massaged around my left ear, face and nose, then worked down my neck and clavicle. Then he moved to my left toes, loosened them, and showed me how this released the tightness around my neck and clavicle and how it was all connected to support the healing of my ear.

I left feeling super relaxed and was impressed enough by his explanations and understanding of the body as a whole that I went back two days later. This was a much gentler massage which left me feeling extremely relaxed. He again spoke about my stomach a lot and I noticed it felt calmer in the days following (until a minor case of Bali belly caught up with me a week later!).

I also did a Reiki healing massage in Ubud at this Raditya Massage which was very good and one of the most calming massages I have had in Bali. She told me I have great energy so that may have helped win me over (again, I wondered if they ever tell anyone their energy is bad?).

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Active Consciousness Meditation

I went to the Active Consciousness Meditation class at Yoga Barn. This came highly recommended by a few people. It was a very activating breathwork sequence that moved through each chakra. The group also held hands throughout the session which created a different energy in the space.

As I have mentioned above, a lot of my nervous system work has focused on calming activities. I have done a few activating breath classes but I tend to hold myself back a little. In this class I pushed more than I usually do on the activating breath but not too much. Others around me had quite dramatic emotional releases, however I did not. I do wonder if in future sessions I will have that experience if I push more on the breath, or if that is simply not for me. I do believe I know my limits with activating breath and it can be overdone, so I was happy with my ability to push and find my edge. I did feel a profound sense of peace after the activating sequences and was able to sit in a calm and meditative state for the end of the session.

It did make me contemplate the need for activating releases versus using nervous system regulation tools to build capacity and more passively release stored emotions.

Overall, I have to say that while Yoga Barn had many classes and excellent teachers, the energy and vibe were not as much for me. I think I prefer smaller studios and classes where it feels a bit less commercial.

Favourite Healthy Cafes

I love a good health food cafe. To be honest, it’s hard to compete with cafe culture in Sydney but here were some of my favourites.

Zest for views and the cacao, I went early and had the place to myself

Kafe, such a cosy little cafe with yummy, warming foods. I spent a lot of time reading here

Bali Buda, I loved their menu and also stocked up on some health foods to go

Tucky - the best matcha I tried (sorry but the rest were definitely sub-par) and yummy avocado toast!

Mudra cafe had a beautiful vibe. I went for lunch one day and there was a Handpan lesson on which was really calming to watch

Dragonfly Sauna

I visited Dragonfly for a Qi Gong class and really wanted to come back for their sauna, but unfortunately due to an ear infection was unable to. It is a herbal sauna with a saltwater pool, my favourite kind of wellness tourism.

Final Thoughts

After two multi-day visits to Ubud I left with mixed feelings. I loved all the healing modalities and yoga classes on offer. However, I think perhaps I did one activating class too many and needed time to integrate everything. In my last class I had a voice in my head yelling “GET ME OUT OF HERE”. I was excited to leave, move to a quieter spot in Bali and spend time in nature to ground myself.

In one of the classes I did, a teacher flippantly remarked that there are too many people in Ubud who live in the higher chakras and not the lower ones, and maybe this was the energy I sensed. Heads in the clouds but their feet not on the ground. Despite these criticisms, I learnt a lot and left feeling inspired to visit India for yoga or China for Qi Gong, and experience the source of these practices in person. We will see where future travels take me.

I used to approach treatments with fear. I had a limiting belief that if I didn’t do absolutely everything for my health I wouldn’t heal, and I approached everything with the attitude that I needed to do more. Now I know I have the power to heal within me, but I also love to support my body.

Joe Dispenza Progressive Meditation Course

I’ve been slowly working through Joe Dispenza’s Progressive Online Course and committing to a daily meditation practice. I didn’t skip a single day in October and have kept my streak going since.

I feel more focused and calmer throughout the day. My attention span at work has improved and there’s a gentle sense of peace that carries through my day when I show up consistently. My goal is to continue this and gradually increase the time I spend meditating each day.

Red Light Therapy

I bought myself a red light panel earlier this year as a present when I started a new job (which didn’t last as long as the panel did).

I’ve learnt a lot about mitochondrial health as recently I’ve been working at a health clinic devoted to it.

Throughout winter I used it every morning since the cold kept me from sunrise grounding (the cold was my excuse anyway!). I try to do 30 minutes upon waking or at least 5 minutes of breathwork and presence in front of it on busier mornings, and then 15 minutes before sunset in the evening.

I got into the habit of doing my Joe Dispenza meditations in front of it, which became such a good habit stack.

DNRS rounds

I stopped doing DNRS rounds consistently for a while as life got busy and I was focusing on other practices, over the last two months I’ve been working on bringing these back in. They are such a soothing practice for me and instantly bring my nervous system into safety. I am aiming to increase this back to the full hour across the next few weeks to further uplevel my health.

I have some great DNRS buddies who I do rounds with who have helped me recommit to the practice. I’ve also accepted that coming and going from this practice has worked for me in keeping me motivated. It’s natural to have ups and downs in my commitment levels.

Rounds are still my favourite way to shift subconscious beliefs and move my body into a parasympathetic state. When I’m consistent, I’m much more aware of my thought patterns throughout the day. Alongside my Joe Dispenza meditations, I’m working on increasing the time I spend doing rounds.

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Monthly Sessions With My Holistic Psychologist / Somatic Therapist

I never know what to call the practitioner I see because no label really fits what she does. After years of brain retraining, I’ve been learning how to process emotions and release held energetic patterns with her support.

We do a mix of inner inquiry, NLP, parts work and inner child healing. I never know what will come up in a session but I always leave with exactly what I need. This is an essential practice for me and has allowed me to work through some very deep emotional healing.

Less Screen Time

I am definitely still working on this one, but extended breaks from social media are helping my nervous system immensely. I truly notice the way my brain goes into autopilot when I am on social media, and this pulls me away from bringing more presence and awareness into my day.

My OOV Practice

For a long time I resisted investing in the OOV, but when I learnt about how it can help to regulate our nervous system I was sold. The 3D movement environment of the OOV awakens the body’s sensory motor networks and uses neural feedback to improve subconscious movement patterns. I see Charlie at pH clinic and have been pretty consistent with this over the last 12 months. I’ve only had two appointments but most of my progress has come from showing up and completing the exercises daily.

Interestingly, Charlie identified my left pelvis as a weaker point and created a program specific for me. As I move into more regular Pilates and exercise it has been great ensuring my subconscious movement patterns are optimal. Surprisingly for me it made the sciatica pain I was having down my left leg disappear! I feel grounded when I step off the OOV and it’s a great 5-10 minute practice I try to squeeze into my mornings.

One of my favourite exercises is one where you lie on the OOV to practice deep diaphragmatic breathing, which is essential for parasympathetic tone. (I used this exercise multiple times a day during a stint when I was having anxiety).

Alkaline Hydrogen Water

This is something I am still learning about and experimenting with, but I have been drinking alkalised, hydrogen Kangen water for almost 12 months now.

Earlier this year, I couldn’t tolerate long sessions in front of my red light. My doctor explained that my redox pathways were inefficient, meaning my body wasn’t managing oxidative stress the way it should. She suggested trying hydrogen-rich water to support those pathways. I can tolerate long red light sessions easily now.

To me, quality water is an essential investment in my health. Hydrogen-rich water is said to act as a gentle antioxidant, supporting my cells and mitochondria, reducing oxidative stress and helping my body recover and maintain energy. The benefits are subtle and cumulative. I am definitely a water snob now and try to take bottles with me everywhere so I can avoid tap water.

To me quality water is an essential investment for my health. I have also been experimenting with these alkaline mineral drops. These have also been great for travel.

Light Hygiene and Grounding

Part of supporting my mitochondria is developing better habits around light hygiene. Setting my circadian rhythm has been essential, but getting my skin into the morning and afternoon sun also helps. I try to use blue blocking glasses at night and have changed the lamps in my bedroom.

I try to get into nature when I can. There is a great post on grounding here. I always see it as the closer I get to nature and living in an environment similar to one that our nervous systems evolved in, the better I feel.

Colonics

Sometimes I just feel the need for a big clean out, iykyk. I see a very experienced practitioner who uses a closed system and is incredible at massaging through any areas that need it. I don’t go regularly, but every few months I feel the need for one of these sessions. It’s definitely not a fun experience while it’s happening. I often get nausea and discomfort as things start to move, but I always leave feeling light and full of energy.

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy

I was lucky to have access to a HBOT chamber and complete 20 sessions recently. My very first session I felt an immediate shift. I was in the aftermath of covid and in a bit of a dip and overnight felt a lot more energy, and as though my nervous system was able to shift back into safety. After this initial shift I kept doing the sessions without noticing much. However, when I returned to Pilates after a couple week break post covid I was shocked at how strong I felt. It was as though I hadn’t even had a break! I believe this was in part due to the HBOT.

I’ve been reading about how mitochondrial health is a combination of improving mitochondrial efficiency as well as the number of mitochondria (a great podcast about this is here). This combined with my other lifestyle changes above definitely made me feel as though my mitochondria were functioning better. There is a great podcast about HBOT here, finances and access permitting it’s something I’d love to do a block of again in future.

I kept the HBOT at a lower pressure moving between 1.4ATA and 1.6ATA for 60 minutes. I found the lower pressures worked for me in preventing oxidative stress and maximising repair and recovery.

Korean Acupuncture

I started seeing a Korean acupuncturist about six months ago. My practitioner took a few sessions to confirm my constitution, there are 8 constitutions in Korean Constitutional Medicine and I am a Hepatonia. I made a few dietary changes in accordance with this. Korean acupuncture differs from other types of acupuncture I’ve done as the needles are inserted and then quickly removed. This is repeated multiple times. We have been focusing a lot on rebalancing my hormones and improving my cycle and I have had dramatic improvements with that in the last six months. I also started some Ki Gong (Korean Qi Gong), this routine is 6 minutes and was an easy addition to my morning routine.

My Current Number One Supplement, Inositol

Last but definitely not least is my current favourite supplement, Inositol. I have specifically been using Ovasitol. I saw this supplement on someone’s Instagram over two years ago and wanted to trial it. When I started brain retraining I cut back on supplements as I needed to repair my relationship to outside healing modalities and I never ended up trialling it.

For some reason I kept thinking about this supplement, when I asked my doctor about it she said that it’s great for the nervous system. I knew that a lot of my issues around my cycle were nervous system related, I used to feel as though a switch would flick during my cycle and I would go into a survival state and have a lot of old symptoms arise.

Even after only 2 weeks on this, I felt an improvement in my period. This alongside Korean Acupuncture and my other nervous system practices has lead to a significant improvement in my periods. One cycle I cried of happiness as I worked a full 10 hour day with no painkillers and energy. I hadn’t had that in over 10 years!

Reflections

I’ve loved this season of my healing and life. There are so many other practices that are simply part of my lifestyle now such as diet, sleep and saunas, but the ones above have been my main focus in recent months.

Reflecting on it all, I think in the months ahead I want to strip things back even more and dedicate more time to mind-body medicine work and deepen my spiritual practice. The main picture is one I snapped on my film camera after a day chasing waterfalls and hiking a mountain in Lombok. I was gritty, covered in dirt, but felt vibrant, connected and glowing with health. Part of me often wonders what would happen if I lived on a remote island surrounded by nature all day without any of these extra treatments. Stay tuned…

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Chronic illness recovery can sometimes look like a bright, smooth transition. That once you heal everything is sunshine and rainbows. Almost like pharmaceutical ads, Labrador puppies running in the sun, a perfect rainbow in the foreground holding up a drug saying, “I don’t shit myself anymore”. Actually, looking at my Instagram I fear that’s how it looks. Idyllic scenery, beautiful travels and my happy smile. And while the highs that I share are amazing and beautiful and the highest of highs, that isn’t the reality of recovery. I still shit myself on occasion (metaphorically anyway).

Recovering from a decade of chronic illness has been by far the hardest thing I have ever been through in my life. Using brain retraining and mind-body work to heal has been a continual exercise in resilience, mental strength and fortitude. Surviving years of debilitating chronic symptoms was an unimaginable horror. I spent years in pain, constantly looking for answers, trying new things and being let down time after time. Yet then I’d come back and try something new. Years of treatments that made me sicker as I was told “You’ll feel worse before you feel better”. I was relentless in my pursuit to feel good. Looking back I honestly have no idea how I got through it. There are many reasons I shy away from sharing the negative sides of the experience. It’s not fun to relive the struggle and there are parts of me that want to run away from that part of my life and never look at it again.

Whilst chronically ill, this quote is exactly what hope was to me: constantly googling for help, trying to comprehend what I was reading through the haze of my intense neurological symptoms. Doing coffee enemas daily for a year, not eating sugar for two years, fasting and crying on the lounge with nausea, being wheeled through an airport to try experimental overseas treatment, spending weeks after recovering in bed, unable to eat for days. Years of feeling numb, lost and confused as I sat watching life from the sidelines, dissociated with a brain that felt like it was on fire. Injecting myself with antibiotics, learning to give myself IVs, vomiting up supplements, weeks isolated without seeing friends, hours in the bath because it was the only way to reduce my pain, listening to yet another doctor tell me it was all in my head, trying another medication that didn’t work, wondering if I was depressed, wondering if a rational person would have given up already, wondering why I hadn’t given up already. Overdoing a treatment (again!) and spending the week back in bed in crippling pain, weeks on end alone, crying, hating everyone who tried to help me, isolating myself from everyone, hating the world and everyone in it. Then getting up the next day and starting again, googling “recovery stories”, not letting that inner light dim in my pursuit of health. Two steps forward, ten steps back, slowly making progress.

Then I discovered brain retraining. Brain retraining requires rewiring our brain’s negativity bias and healing requires staying in an elevated emotional state and breaking away from the habit of continually focusing on illness. I had to completely change my entire way of thinking and my approach to recovery. I have previously written about how this felt a bit like gaslighting myself. While moving away from victim consciousness is essential, I am also learning that it is equally important to validate the hardships and give myself love and compassion. By validating how bloody hard it is, this signals safety to the nervous system, reduces internal resistance and allows the brain to move more easily into the elevated emotional states essential for healing.

When I first started brain retraining, I bought the Gupta Program and I dabbled in it for months. It didn’t matter what I did I could never get myself to stick to a daily practice. I’d reach four or five days of consistency, then fall out of it. Back then, I would hate myself because of it, I’d call myself lazy and feel shame and disappointment. But it didn’t matter what horrible names I called myself, I still couldn’t stick to the program. I have since learnt that my brain was stuck in a freeze state, of course it didn’t have any motivation. I send love and compassion to that version of myself now, she was doing the best she could with the capacity she had at that time.

Months later, after a concussion and a re-emergence of old symptoms alongside crippling anxiety, I hit rock bottom (again!). It was at this time I started DNRS and managed to create a consistent routine. The DNRS program recommends dedicating an hour to nervous system training per day, by completing ‘rounds’ (a routine involving visualisations). This was hard and I needed a lot of tricks to keep myself motivated. Once I learnt that my brain was wired to resist change, I tried to turn it into a game. My pre-frontal cortex was going to win, not my limbic system that was stuck in a survival response and feared change.

Sometimes it was 11.30pm and I was sneaking in a DNRS round instead of sleeping because I knew I couldn’t break my streak of rounds or I’d stop altogether. I’d spend hours some days, just sitting on my bed procrastinating doing them, staring out into space. I had to WILL myself into them. I’d spend the whole day at home and somehow find myself again at 11pm fitting in my rounds. The willpower and commitment it required to fight against my brain which wanted to stay frozen and stuck was extremely difficult. In amongst all this I had symptoms shouting at me, willing me to stop, telling me to forget about this silly visualisation practice. There was a part of me that wanted to lie in bed and wallow in self-pity. I did do this some days and I still do have days like this. Alongside this, my head fog and malaise added an extra element of difficulty.

Someone once described chronic fatigue as living life swimming against a current. I have never found a more apt metaphor to describe the struggle of chronic illness, even seemingly simple things require a lot more effort and dedication. “It’s just a simple exercise Alex, just sit and do a visualisation”, I’d tell myself, guilting myself about not being consistent enough. But it wasn’t that simple, it felt like moving mountains. Swimming against a current day in and day out is draining and I was already tired!

With time, the benefits of nervous system regulation became obvious, I could see that this was the missing piece in the puzzle that was my health journey. I experienced a more linear progress compared to the previous eight years. In saying that, it was far from straightforward. I had weeks or even months where I’d regress. But I had tools now to help me through it, and each setback I came out stronger. As my brain healed, the practice became easier.

I love this video from Dan Buglio. He talks about how you have to find an inner strength, something within you that can quieten those voices in your head that are telling you not to change, not to do your practice and to stay put. Somehow, I was able to find that, and I am grateful to the past version of myself who discovered it. But my goodness it was hard.

It’s been over two years now of fairly consistent practice. Of course I have had patches where it falls to the wayside, I’m in a big one right now, in some ways motivation is harder the busier and healthier I get. But then I accept these patches, don’t judge myself and pick myself up and choose to commit all over again. The self-motivation required is unlike anything else. As I’ve been saying, hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life!

But there are more layers of difficulty. It’s strange even now being seen as a success story. Sometimes I wince when people celebrate me as though I’m finished because I know I still have more work to do. I used to see recovery posts and subconsciously think if I can walk again and travel again my whole life will be fine. But physical recovery is different from re-entering the world. After ten years of not fully participating there’s growth and lessons in the come back and it’s a different part of my healing. (Not to mention the guilt of finding things hard when part of me thinks I should just be grateful to be healthy). Someone asked me recently, “When did you start feeling well?” but there’s no black and white answer. I thought there would be a finish line, a moment it was all over, but there isn’t. There’s beauty in embracing that and learning to love exactly where I am, but in the background of the wins of being out in the world some days I’m still like a duck, kicking my legs frantically underwater.

Imagine finding work for the first time in ten years, even without chronic illness symptoms. Imagine figuring out what to do with yourself and realising the things you thought you wanted aren’t what you want at all. Still feeling 23 in some ways, but then much older in others, yet trying to learn how to be 33. Realising how radically different you are from the person who entered the storm and figuring out who you are going to be when you walk out of it. Then starting from scratch and creating her from the ground up. On top of this, I have a rewired brain now, I am a different person with new and different values. That is a whole other level of hard. When you question your very values and existence and dig into reprogramming your subconscious thought patterns, and the person you spent your whole life believing you were drops out from beneath you, it takes a while to find your grounding again. Who the F am I? What do I even want? Questions I am still figuring out, although I am also learning maybe they don’t need an answer.

For me, this self-discovery process has meant ups and downs, patches of grief where I do not want to leave my bedroom, leaning heavily on hugs from my dog, and sometimes going too far and making silly choices. There are times when I want to move back to my parents’ house and never leave again, living like I did for years when sick. Like Bambi learning to walk again. Maybe in some ways these are not even chronic illness–specific challenges but just life, always with the easing yet constant presence of symptoms in the background. I know it is also a gift to have this blank canvas to build a beautiful life, and I have an acute awareness of the privilege and beauty of being alive. The first time post-illness I experienced an interpersonal issue with somebody, I revelled in the fact that it meant I had a social life again. I am all too aware that without the rain there’s no rainbow or flowers or flowing waterfalls or so many beautiful things, all of my clouds have silver linings these days, but that does not mean it is easy.

Another facet of recovery is that the more I heal, the more capacity I have to process trauma from my health journey. Last year I spent a lot of time travelling and free, but in between those wins and moments out in the world, I spent a lot of time processing intense grief and trauma from the years prior. Feelings and emotions I was unable to express when I was in the midst of it because I was in a freeze and survival state and my nervous system did not have the capacity. I spent weeks last year unable to get off my bedroom floor, hours of work with my beautiful holistic therapist learning how to let myself feel and release years of grief and suffering. Learning how to face it all and not run away from it.

But the rewards exceed all the hard work. It’s paid off and then some, incredibly rewarding yadda yadda. You know all of that because I always talk about the wins and the positivity, my Instagram is an ad for it. How I am becoming more grounded, closer to my true self etc etc. In Big Magic Elizabeth Gilbert talks about how most people miss out on the rewards because they quit when it gets hard (she also has a great piece here which is very on theme). I FEEL this with brain retraining and the inner work - it’s hard to truly face yourself, your biases, your contradictions, the truth that your thought patterns might be keeping you sick, facing deep fears and insecurities instead of running away from them. This comes with ups and downs, but every time I have a low patch I know I just have to accept, surrender and trust that there is going to be more beauty on the other side. I love who I am now because of all the work I have done rewiring and healing from the inside out.

I read the book Sorrow & Bliss during recovery and this quote stood out: "Things do happen. Terrible things. The only thing any of us get to do is decide whether they happen to us or if, at least in part, they happen for us... And I wonder, is there any way you could come to see that what you've been through is for something? Is it why you feel everything and love harder and fight more ferociously than anyone else? Is it why you are the love of your sister's life?... Why is that, if not for the life you have lived, as someone who has been refined by fire?”

I write this from a place of empowerment, not pity or victimhood. I know the difficulties and hardships have shaped me and I feel genuine and immense gratitude for it all. I’m also grateful I’ve had relative privilege and strong support throughout my recovery. Still, it matters to share honestly about the ups and downs. Not to revel in it or stay stuck, but like soldiers coming out of the storm we can trade battle scars and recognise the depth of understanding we share about the capacity and resilience of the human spirit. I have a few friends like this and there’s a way we see each other that others can’t, a natural depth to our friendship. Even with strangers, I can be brought to tears of pride and awe when they tell me their story.

Yes, the reality is recovery is hard. Harder than I can put into words. Yet, the deeper the struggle, the deeper the learning and self-growth. I have a big scar on my chest from my portacath and for a long time, I felt embarrassed by it. But like the mental scars, I now see it as a symbol of my fierceness and grit, like the Japanese art of repairing cracks with gold. This was me with dirt on my face, blood on my knuckles, spitting out a tooth as I rose for another go. This was me becoming refined by fire. And I couldn’t be prouder of that.

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I recall during my first coaching call my coach asked me, "Do you believe the brain is the cause of your symptoms?" I remember answering, "Well, sort of, I think maybe SOME things are, but I have chronic Lyme Disease, so most of my symptoms are from chronic infections". I had seen recovery stories of people with similar symptoms to me and that had convinced me to give brain retraining a go. I also knew I had a dysregulated nervous system and zero capacity for stress. However, I wasn't fully convinced that it was the reason behind most of my symptoms.

Understanding mould sensitivities was my AHA moment

I understood the link between the brain and mould sensitivities. The explanation for the need for brain retraining in those cases made total sense to me. But for the symptoms of fatigue and brain fog, I wasn't sure the brain was the cause.

For example, with mould, previously I believed that Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS) or severe mould sensitivities were a result of toxic mould exposure, poor genetics and an inability to detoxify. I believed the analogy of the 'mould bucket' being full, and that you needed to avoid any mould and do intense detoxification protocols in order to heal and empty the bucket. Brain retraining presented an alternative theory.

Yes, the initial exposure to mould may have been real and significant. But what keeps the symptoms going is the brain’s learned association between mould and danger.

If there’s a lot of emotional stress around the initial reaction, that experience gets imprinted more deeply. The brain creates a strong neural pathway that says “mould = threat.” People with CIRS often experience symptoms before they even realise they’ve been exposed. That’s a conditioned response from the limbic system.

The more fear and avoidance there is, the more the brain reinforces that pathway. It sends symptoms to alert the presence of mould as it believes that is what it needs to do to stay safe. This is how CIRS patients become increasingly sensitive to mould, the fear makes the brain continue to associate it with danger. I believe our bodies are built to detox small amounts of mould. A lot of people with CIRS talk about living in mouldy places earlier in life with no issue. The issue now is the brain’s perception, a cross-wiring has occurred in the brain.

The hunter-gatherer brain helps explain this

It helps to look back at how our brain developed to understand this theory more. On being exposed to a threat our hunter-gatherer ancestor's brains would imprint that threat into memory, in order to ensure safety in the future. For example, if they came across a snake in the bushes, the brain would memorise this experience. Next time they hear a rustle in the grass their heart rate and nervous system will respond before they consciously register it. This is how the brain evolved for survival.

The problem in modern life arises because our hunter-gatherer brain didn't have a sophisticated pre-frontal cortex and complex, chronic emotions like we have today. Now, our thoughts and emotions can signal the threat response. This is how the brain becomes cross-wired and sends symptoms for things that aren't actually dangerous, whether that be mould, food, sounds or even movement and energy output.

It took longer to apply this to fatigue

Now, I had to apply the above logic but to the idea of fatigue. Just like CIRS is a sensitivity to mould, chronic fatigue is a sensitivity to energy expenditure. Unlike mould, fatigue didn’t seem to have an obvious trigger. It felt like something that was just happening to me. So the idea that my brain could be recreating fatigue as a protective response felt a bit abstract at first.

Dissecting my health journey helped me to understand things better. My health issues began with a virus, most likely Epstein-Barr and I was diagnosed with Glandular Fever. At the time, I was supposed to be completing a finance internship which for 22 year old me was the absolute, be all and end all. In my mind, missing or failing at this internship was the 'end-of-the-world', when I became sick it was the first time in my life that I experienced true anxiety. In my mind, all the work I had done the four years prior studying at university were all for nothing if this virus didn't go away and allow me to work (it's ironic looking back at this now).

On reflection, I can see that my stress, emotions and ruminating wired something in. The virus was real, but the meaning my brain attached to it was layered with fear.

At the time I was a classic, type A, high functioning, achievement-oriented person, this laid the ground work for my nervous system to crash. The virus forced me to stop and made me rest. In that vulnerable, emotional state, my brain made the connection: rest = safe, energy = threat. At this time, rest was essential for healing.

From this I believe my brain learnt: "When I am exhausted, I don't have to perform, I get to stop. It keeps me safe from crashing harder". Eventually, my brain made the association that energy production = danger. When I utilised energy it would recreate the same symptoms that had protected me during the virus: fatigue, brain fog, shutdown. My brain was trying to make me feel safe in the only way it knew how, by making me stop.

The virus was real. But the pattern got stuck
This doesn’t mean the virus wasn’t real. It was. But what if the brain never updated the story? What if it kept firing off the same old program, even though the danger had passed? It got stuck in a cross-wire in an attempt to keep me safe. When I then became anxious and fearful I reinforced those brain pathways and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy of severe fatigue.

To me, this is no different from what happens with mould. Instead of reacting to an external substance, the brain becomes hypervigilant to internal cues, like physical effort, emotional intensity or stress. It’s still the same protective loop, just harder to see.

You don’t have to fully believe it to start

Believing in this truly helped me with my recovery. I understand it is difficult at the start of the journey to really sit with and believe in it. So another option could be to wonder, "What if I were able to contemplate this as being true, what would that feel like". That gentle curiosity is all that you need to start this journey (then eventually your symptoms will start disappearing and you will KNOW it to be true)

For me, I didn’t truly accept this idea until I started to feel the changes physically. I find it difficult to articulate the somatic understanding I have of it now. I hope that in some way this idea makes sense to those in the midst of these symptoms now and can be a light bulb moment on your way to a full recovery.

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Family Constellation Therapy is a type of group therapy where participants are invited to embody roles within a family system. Members of the group role-play family dynamics, which allows unresolved issues to surface, be witnessed and in many cases, can become a catalyst for deep healing.

Developed in Germany by Bert Hellinger in the late 20th century, this therapeutic process blends psychotherapy principles with spiritual traditions Hellinger encountered in his travels. It highlights how trauma, beliefs and behaviours can echo across generations.

The constellation I attended included around 15 participants, some strangers and some familiar. Knowing a few people in the room helped me feel more at ease, it felt like a safe space to be vulnerable. That said, I’ve also heard of people participating in constellations with total strangers and still finding the work incredibly moving.

We began by sitting in a circle, introducing ourselves and describing our family systems: naming parents, grandparents, ancestral origins, siblings, children and birth order. It was a unique experience to start my introduction with, “I am Alex, daughter of Sue and John.” It made me reflect on my identity as something shaped by lineage. We then broke into pairs and took turns sharing our family stories without interruption for ten minutes each. I was paired with a woman who told me a story that could have been a movie of her fierce mother fleeing war. Through her story, I began to see how patterns had played out across generations in her family and began contemplating how much my experiences, behaviours and beliefs have been shaped by subconscious family patterns.

Because there were a lot of people, not everyone was going to have their own constellation. Those who wished to participate put their names into a box and we “let fate decide”. At first, I thought this would be frustrating if you wanted a turn and didn’t get chosen, but I soon learnt that participating in others’ constellations was a profound experience in itself. As for me, I half-heartedly put my name in, unsure if I wanted a turn or not.

We started to move through some constellations. The focus person would sit at the front and chat with the facilitator, who was an incredibly sharp and intuitive woman. She had a gift for asking just the right questions to unearth the heart of the issue. After a bit of discussion, the focus person was asked to select group members to represent key figures in their family.

Watching this unfold was fascinating. With more women than men in the group, the few men were frequently cast as fathers, brothers or sons. Some participants were repeatedly chosen for similar roles, which made me wonder about the different qualities people exhibit. I was a little nervous and hoped not to be chosen at the start. I didn’t for the first few, which allowed me to sit and observe and take in the therapy.

For obvious reasons, I won’t disclose specifics that came up for individuals, but the first few constellations were full of emotion. The focus person would be prompted to speak directly to the members of their family, “What would you like to say to your son?” and, in turn, the person playing the son would be prompted to reply, “What do you wish your mother understood about this situation?” I watched as those embodying mothers broke into tears of empathy, while others released years of tension by finally speaking words that had long gone unspoken.

I also found myself wondering: Why is it that we can find it so difficult to communicate clearly with the people that we are closest to? It’s interesting how it’s easier to speak our truth to a room of near strangers than with those we know and love the most. It reminded me of the freedom I felt travelling when I was younger, when I would meet brand new groups of people at once and could be whoever I wanted to be.

Codependency and Leaning into the Power of Self

I found myself experiencing an incredible amount of emotional resonance with one particular constellation early on in the day. It was interesting as the story on a surface level was completely different from any of my experiences. She was a mother and spoke of relationships with certain family members that changed when she decided to move countries at a young age. These are life experiences I have never had. Yet, a universality pierced through.

I felt especially emotional towards the end when the facilitator instructed her to pick somebody to represent her inner child. A woman with a beautiful, big smile and gorgeous, happy energy was chosen and sat beneath her as a representation of her inner child. Next, she was asked to pick somebody to represent her soul. A striking, tall woman with lovely silver hair and a white outfit was chosen and stood behind her.

The focus person was prompted to talk to her inner child, to tell her she doesn’t need the approval of her family and to express love and gratitude to her for the choices she made. She then asked her to lean into her soul, who had her hands lovingly on her shoulders, to acknowledge that her truth came from within. She was encouraged to see that she made the best choices for her life and to appreciate that. The facilitator had her repeat a mantra, saying, “I don’t need anyone's approval, because I have my own”.

This reminded me of a session I’d had the week prior with my holistic therapist. I had expressed a desire to know that an interaction with someone in my life had been as meaningful for them as it had for me. I spoke about wanting to know what my friend’s thoughts were in this specific situation. She challenged me to see that I didn’t need to know how they felt to validate my experiences. I had felt extremely challenged by this and resisted what she was telling me. A part of me felt as though the interaction was only meaningful if reciprocated; in essence, I needed something outside of me to validate how I felt. “Try and lean into and feel the truth of what YOU felt, that is all you need,” I was told.

When we are grounded in our power, we know exactly how we feel and trust and validate ourselves. I love how Gabor Mate talks about authenticity, he teaches that trusting oneself is a survival mechanism. Our ancestors had to have a deep trust in themselves to survive (i.e. if they thought there was a bear, they had to trust and act on it). Our nervous systems and brains are still wired for authenticity. Learning to trust myself in all areas of my life is something that I have been working on. Not needing others to validate my experiences feels like another way of tapping into a deeper feeling of authenticity.

As I watched the constellation, I felt the conviction in the words, “I don’t need anyone’s approval, because I have my own”. I felt the energy in the room shift and a surge of power and emotion moved through my body. It felt as though warm, golden light was glowing from deep within me. I realised that this is how it would feel energetically in my body to be the version of myself who dares to stand authentically in my feelings in all situations, with no dependency on others. Feeling this energy shift and power move through my body was very moving. I added to the collective shedding of tears that was a recurrent theme that day.

Time to Be a Grandmother

After lunch, it was finally my turn to participate in a constellation. The woman who had shared her family story with me earlier in the day asked me to play her grandmother. At first, I was confused. I was much younger than this woman, who had two grown children. Why would she choose me?

She later explained that her grandmother had died young, likely younger than I am now and it was the innocence she saw in me.

We moved through a beautiful constellation where six of us stood in a line, representing her mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and earlier generations. Seeing us embody a lineage of strong, independent women helped the focus person lean into their strength and release some of the hardships that had been passed down.

A recurring theme that came up throughout the day was the idea of questioning the narratives and stories we tell ourselves. The facilitator was very fierce in questioning us on this: “But are you certain that your father feels that way?” The answer was often, “Years ago, he said this comment.” We began to realise how easy it is to get stuck in stories and to hold on to them. We learnt and were able to embody releasing these burdens. There was one moment in this constellation where the female ancestors were given pillows to hold, to represent that we were carrying these hardships for the focus person, allowing her to move forward with a feeling of freedom.

Playing a role was quite insightful, I felt like I was able to tap into playing her grandmother by embodying elements of the focus person herself (who I had been acquainted with before the session and whose fierceness and intelligence I admired). There was also an energy that all the constellations carried that enabled me to embody the role.

It was interesting as participants who had been in sessions before shared about changes that occurred after them. Even without contacting or seeing anybody, stories about family reaching out post-constellation, resolved relationships and others were abundant. One woman shared how after a constellation focusing on her teenage daughter, she woke the next day to what she described as a completely different child. I found this fascinating. The more I learn about energy and the quantum, the more intrigued I am by stories like these.

My Turn as a Focus Person

This constellation session was organised by my integrative doctor’s clinic and as such, many participants had either experienced chronic fatigue themselves or as a carer. Before lunch, we discussed having a constellation focused purely on fatigue. This didn’t end up happening, but when my name was selected, we decided that focusing on that would be great for me and others in the group.

I sat at the front of the room and was prompted with questions about my health. I shared that whilst my health was great these days, fatigue had been a big part of my life for the last decade and I was still processing some of the difficulty of what I had been through. The facilitator asked me to pick somebody in the circle to represent fatigue. I looked around the room and the choice was obvious. There was a woman in the room whom I had initially met a few years ago when I was having IVs weekly for Lyme Disease, who I used to see in the treatment rooms back then, as she was undergoing her treatment. I hadn’t seen her since then, so even earlier in the day when we were reacquainted, it had triggered a lot of traumatic memories.

We moved through a role play where the embodiment of fatigue was hovering over my shoulder. To see it represented in this way was very confronting. The fact that the woman playing it triggered so many memories of being unwell meant instant tears for us both.

I have realised that facing these difficult memories is part of my healing. I have been working on this a lot recently, learning not to run away from the trauma of my experiences but to turn and face them, accept them, let myself feel what they make me feel and not resist them. In the constellation, instead of trying to run away or escape the fatigue, the facilitator had me turn, face the fatigue and bow to it. To thank it for all it has given me.

I was encouraged to reflect on all the things I am grateful for about my experience of illness. In all honesty, I have a lot of gratitude for it. It has been my greatest challenge, but it has also been my greatest gift. I can’t imagine my life without it and I love the person I am because of it. The instructor suggested that every morning, I wake up and bow to it and thank it.

This intuitively makes sense and it is what I have done with DNRS and Primal Trust, the nervous system regulation and neuroplasticity programs that have helped me to heal. I have learnt to allow symptoms and to stop carrying the burden of illness on my shoulders. In doing this, my nervous system has been able to move away from fear and into safety, thereby allowing my symptoms to heal. I know first-hand that letting go of this resistance has benefited me, but moving into love and gratitude takes it a step further. I am grateful that I am at the stage of my healing where I can bow and thank it and genuinely feel a deep sense of gratitude. I feel grief, pain and suffering, but I feel genuine gratitude for how it’s changed my life for the better.

I was then asked to pick somebody to represent my future self. I picked the woman whose grandmother I had played, who, as I mentioned earlier, had a lot of characteristics I admired. Maria had me make a sharp turn away from the fatigue, letting it be part of my past as I turned toward the future. We had someone else come and represent my soul and stand over my shoulders between the fatigue and me. I was left with a deep sense of knowing that all is ok. Life is great, it’s beautiful in the present moment and I have so much beauty in my future. There was a power in seeing things embodied in this way and it’s probably the most healing aspect of Family Constellation Therapy.

Reflections After the Constellation

After all of this, I was exhausted. It was a 9-5 day of feeling emotions for others and feeling emotions of my own. I left feeling empowered and grateful. I felt gratitude for my own experiences and appreciation for the energy and resonance that can be created in group settings. It was a moving and powerful experience and I’d love to try it again.

When I first became unwell with Chronic Fatigue I was in my early 20’s, a high-achieving, go-getter on the brink of starting my life post-university when doctors told me there was nothing that could be done. That was the response from the kind doctors. Others told me my blood tests were totally fine and that it was all in my head, “There’s nothing wrong with you”. One even advised me that if I went out and found a boyfriend I’d feel better. They looked at me like I was a silly young girl taking up their time and didn’t listen to my pleas for help seriously. “My brain won’t work anymore, I can’t get out of bed most days”, I’d try to explain, nobody understanding the extent of my symptoms.

I went from doctor to doctor with no helpful advice, “Eat well and rest, but 80% of people never recover again”, said one prominent immunologist before telling me, “Come back and see me in a few months”. For what exactly? I wondered as I paid the bill and booked another appointment, because where else would I go? I went home, cried for hours, then forced myself to stop - not because I felt better, but because I was too drained to keep going. At 22, could I be one of the 80%? Was my life over before it had even begun?

Another doctor insisted it was depression and sent me to a psychiatrist, I only went to the appointment to prove her wrong. As expected, the lovely psychiatrist said I didn’t have depression. He kindly validated how I was feeling, pronouncing that the ‘real, physiological’ symptoms I had were coming from something else - he just didn’t know what. This would be a terrible appointment for most people, but my expectations had become so low that just having someone believe in me was comforting.

Then, the psychiatrist suggested hypnosis. He told me our thoughts are powerful and showed me images of water molecules being changed by thoughts. He took me into a little room with no windows behind his office and I sat in a big armchair as he chanted mantras about how I would heal, I sat there trying not to laugh. He recorded it on a tape for me to listen to at home. We had to dig through the garage to find an old tape player. I still remember one of the lines that he chanted in an enthusiastic sing-song voice, “When you wake up, it’ll be the best day of the REST of your life, your life will get better and better”. I half-heartedly tried it - after all, he was the first doctor to actually suggest a possible solution. I laughed through his tapes. I was unable to see it at the time, but the joke wasn’t on this kind-hearted psychiatrist, it was on me. I was stuck, desperate and getting sicker and sicker.

My symptoms progressed and without anybody to help me, I started to wonder if the doctors were right and perhaps it was all in my head. I recall forcing myself to swim in our backyard pool, thinking I could push through and the symptoms would disappear. Getting to the pool completely depleted me, I had to lie sprawled across the pavement beside the pool recovering before I had the energy to get myself back inside. It was as though all the energy in my body had been squeezed out of me, like a brittle, useless dried-up sponge. At this period of my illness, when I overdid movement, I’d end up in bed for hours or even days after, in intense pain from the exhaustion.

When conventional medicine fails you, and you find yourself in pain, of course, you are going to turn to alternative methods. I remind myself of this when people scoff at my treatments or dismiss them as 'unproven.' As a wise friend once pointed out, “If people are making fun of you, that’s a good thing, they don’t understand your desperation to escape pain and they haven’t had to suffer like you”, the ultimate in taking the high road. I certainly wasn’t going to fall into the 80% category without putting up a desperate fight.

First came the realisation that my diet could make a difference. One day it clicked in my mind that food was my fuel, and did I want good fuel or bad fuel? First I finished eating the pecan pie in the fridge, and then I started researching optimal diets. In hindsight, I did take it too far and got a bit obsessive over it. The low salicylate diet where I could only eat cauliflower and steak was a real low point. Eventually, I found a happy medium with a diet that works for me. No processed foods, gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, low carb, with lots of healthy fats & grass-fed meats. I discovered food can be medicine, it’s just a subtler medicine than pharmaceuticals

I found integrative medicine and some incredible doctors and naturopaths, finally doctors who believed in my symptoms and understood me! One such practitioner, a kinesiologist, used a diagnostic tool called an Asyra, which led to my Lyme Disease diagnosis. I held onto two metal rods connected to a laptop, while low-voltage currents were transmitted through my body, measuring my response to these subtle electrical signals. The results from the Asyra testing were later confirmed by blood tests, which piqued my interest—are we energetic beings? At the time, however, I wasn’t ready to go within and think about this any further.

When you have a complex chronic illness, you become an investigator. I became Sherlock Holmes, determined to solve the mystery of my own body. I’m not sure if Sherlock Holmes ever felt the need to take photos of a toilet bowl before flushing but that’s what I found myself doing. The ‘Hidden’ album on most people’s iPhones is usually reserved for something a little sexier than mine was at that time. I felt better about it once I read Yolanda Hadid’s account of her healing journey, and she unashamedly included some similar pictures in her book.

My desperation to feel better eventually took me overseas, where I did some experimental treatment for Lyme Disease. I was sedated and put into a heat chamber and my body temperature was raised to almost 42 degrees to kill off the Lyme Disease causing bacteria, which is heat sensitive. I underwent this treatment four times - twice in Malaysia, twice in Germany. Should I tell you about the time I woke up from sedation in a nappy, ripped it off in defiance, fell back asleep - and promptly shit myself? Or the time in Germany when apparently, as the sedation wore off I was naked and started trying to punch the nurse who was trying to help me. She told me they were forced to sedate me again, and showed me where I’d punched a hole in the plastic equipment. Perhaps that should have been a sign of some pent-up anger and subconscious emotions I needed to express, but again, I wasn’t ready for it at the time. It did provide some laughs, though, which had become quite rare at this point in my journey.

As time wore on, I made some improvements, but I wanted more. Gut health is a key area I had to work on, with colonics and coffee enemas becoming a regular part of my routine. The lowlight of my colonic experiences was probably in Germany when instead of a woman like I usually work with, a man in his 50s came to administer one. In his defence, he was a complete professional and extremely kind, but having an older German man tell you in a heavy accent to breathe and “It’s going in now, just gently, breathe” as he pushed a tube up my bum, was one of those moments where I thought, “What has my life come to?”

Coffee enemas were a revelation for me. I used to pay over $100 for glutathione IV’s, which is one of the master antioxidants in the body essential for detox. This was before I learnt that coffee has Palmitic Acid in it and when taken rectally can increase glutathione by up to 700%. I did them almost daily for a year at one point, they boosted my brain clarity and energy at a time when I was desperate to feel well. When people talk about cutting back on their coffee addiction I’m tempted to shout how much I relate just in reverse. ‘Bottoms Up’ I’d announce as I’d head off to the bathroom each morning (which incidentally is the name of a Facebook Group you can join if you want to learn more). Despite this laughter, I’d always ensure the enema kit was hidden when we had visitors, the chronic illness shame spiral ran deep after all. (I can’t believe I am posting this publicly!)

In time, my patience waned and I wanted more healing than my super-regimented, supplement-heavy, physically focused treatment was giving me. It had been 8 years at this point and I was still mostly housebound, so honestly fair enough on the impatience. People kept mentioning the nervous system and this thing called brain retraining. “My son watched these videos and changed his thoughts and now he is almost healed”, I was told. This triggered me immensely, “I have REAL, PHYSICAL symptoms, I can’t just think myself better”, I’d say, it reminded me of the doctors who dismissed me in the earlier days of my illness and had told me the illness was all in my head.

They say when it rains it pours and at this point, my life was a comedy of errors. I hit my head on a table at home one day and ended up with a pretty serious concussion. The strange thing was that a bunch of old symptoms reappeared overnight. How could these symptoms that I thought were from Lyme Disease reappear overnight after a head knock? Was this a sign of a dysregulated nervous system?

My acupuncturist told me a story that confirmed this theory (yes, I still laugh at myself when I start sentences with ‘my acupuncturist says..’). He had a patient who had a concussion from a car accident involving a red car, whenever something red came into her peripheral vision on the same side as the car, her symptoms would flare. Her brain had made a connection and learnt to see red as a threat. What if the same was happening to me? Had my brain been cross-wired, and was it seeing movement as a threat? Was it overwhelmed and stuck in fight/flight mode, and is that why the head knock caused so many random symptoms to reappear?

After listening to an inspiring recovery story, I signed up to an online program called DNRS (the similarity of the acronym to Do Not Resuscitate some kind of weird irony?). I watched the videos as they taught me how to calm my limbic system, and move my brain out of fight/flight mode and into a parasympathetic healing state. The instructor had printed posters for her floor and danced around the room performing this frankly whacky routine, speaking to herself at each poster using actions to teach her brain a new way of thinking and being, and then moving through a visualisation technique. I listened as they taught how our thoughts can influence our brains and bodies. “You can’t say the word symptoms anymore, you should call them ITs to remove your association with illness”, they instructed. I watched it, wanting to believe in it, but was unable to hide my scepticism.

Thankfully, something changed in me and I decided to give it a go. Desperation? A slight aberration in my ego and forthright attitude due to the concussion? I do see the irony that I spent years vehemently annoyed at anybody who expressed criticism of my “left-field” holistic treatments, declaring from my knowing high-horse that they weren’t open-minded enough, whilst I too called brain retraining and the mind-body connection rubbish.

I’ve since noticed a sign of true growth in me is when I come to areas of life without judgement, a beginner’s mindset, an open heart and a knowing that I have no freaking clue what’s going on, I’m just here happy to be living and learning (Live, Laugh, Love!).

I joined some laughter yoga classes that DNRS ran and realised it had been years since I’d really laughed. I sat on Zoom with 20 others and a laugh instructor as we went through a routine with zero jokes, and just forced laughter. I loved it! I was smiling all day after my first class, both at the absurdity of it all, but also because I thought it might work. I also loved the camaraderie of the group, all choosing to embrace joy to heal their chronic illnesses, rather than becoming victims of their suffering.

I recall when I was in Germany, a physical therapist walked in, came close to me, and gasped, ‘You are deeply broken and unhappy. I can feel it in your energy.’ I immediately burst into tears because I knew it was true. Illness had chained me down, and every day, I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders as I struggled to escape it.

I remember another time bargaining with the universe, thinking about all the things I’d willingly give away to have my health back, “I’d go one million dollars into debt”, I’d whine, “take everything I own, take it all” I’d proclaim with desperation looking up dramatically at the sky (then down at my beloved dog wondering if I’d include her in the bargaining). Funny how I was always looking outside of me, grasping for something else or someone else who could heal me.

I decided to fully commit to myself and go within, adopting a new routine with brain retraining, meditation and a focus on regulating my nervous system. As I was “sitting on a horse, firing arrows” in my new morning Qi Gong routine I realised something - the only person I had been firing arrows at was myself. I had been fighting with my body, not working with it. This inner conflict was the reason I wasn’t healing. I was regimented with my diet, supplements, routine and lifestyle and had worked my nervous system to the brink. Trapped in overdrive, my nervous system was viewing the world through a lens of fear. I felt so much shame and guilt around being unwell and carried that around with me everywhere. I’d done all the work externally but had never looked truly within at my spirit and soul. I had lost the ability to love myself and had lost the carefree, fun version of myself.

Fully committing to brain retraining and healing, I finally began to open up again. I began to feel joy and hope, and felt physical changes in my body. I pulled back on being so regimented and focused on the basics. Good food, sunlight, grounding, getting out into nature, swimming in the ocean, appreciating the flowers and the feeling of sun on my skin. I learnt how to wear my groovy blue blocker glasses without shame (at least around my housemate). I learnt how to let things go and surrender (a work in progress). I learnt about breathwork, and immersed myself in books that taught me about psychoneuroimmunology, neuroplasticity and polyvagal theory. I learnt about how powerful our thoughts are and finally started a regular meditation practice. I listened to affirmations as I slept, infusing them into my subconscious. I contemplated reaching out to that psychiatrist, knowing we would have a lot to discuss these days (honestly, I also wanted to see if he still used tapes). I rewired my brain’s negativity bias and started a group chat with my family where we sent pictures of any love hearts we spotted out in the world, a metaphor for how I was learning to see love, joy and peace in the world again.

I made a friend around this time who didn’t know my health history and when I listed some of the things I never do like drinking or partying, he asked me, “When did you stop having fun?!”. While I know I don’t need to drink or party to have fun, it’s a question I ask myself now and guides me. Healing for me has been about learning to have fun again. I dance around my apartment, teaching my body how to feel joy again as it had forgotten how. And I did that wacky little talk to my brain as I move around the room visualisation technique routine that DNRS taught me for an hour almost every day for 18 months, and it worked!! My symptoms started easing, and more importantly, I started to find myself again.

Over time, I realised that the answer I had been searching for was within me. The power to heal came when I committed fully to myself and chose to show myself love and grace. I learned to surrender with grace - and then surrender even more. Alongside this, I sprinkled in some science-backed neuroplasticity and targeted nervous system regulation exercises.

My experience of illness brought me to the edge. It was a true dark night of the soul. I’m a different person because of it, and I’m forever grateful for the lessons I’ve learnt and continue to learn. I’ve started on a personal growth journey that I know I’ll be on for the rest of my life. It’s brought me closer to my true and most authentic self. I’m still learning to embrace vulnerability, and sharing this story openly is part of that process. At the same time, I want to shout from the rooftops about the journey I’ve been on, in the hope that others stuck in that dark, desperate place, not knowing where to turn, might hear my call and learn that they too can heal themselves.

I was late to the mindfulness party but my first spiritual book was “The Untethered Soul” which I heard about through an Oprah Super Soul podcast episode (Oprah, the classic segue into spirituality). Michael A. Singer telling me, “You are not your thoughts, you are the observer of them” was an earth-shattering realisation. Admittedly, I was 26 so I am unsure what took me so long to learn this, but it marked the start of my belated journey to stillness.

After this, I dabbled in reading different spirituality books and had various stints with meditation but never established a consistent practice, I always lived with a bit of agitation in my mind and was a somewhat reactive person. I remember a friend in high school commenting once, “You have a new person you are annoyed with each week”. She wasn’t wrong, that was how I lived my life, always easily annoyed and with a tendency to overthink things. Thankfully, my journey recovering from chronic illness introduced me to the Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS), a neuroplasticity-based program for nervous system regulation. This became the catalyst for a rewarding journey into a quieter mind.

Just before commencing DNRS, I experienced a major change in my personal life and realised I couldn’t regulate myself. My mind wouldn’t shut up about what was going on. Not only did I have to rant and rave to anybody who would listen, but I would keep myself up at night, pulsing with frustration in a continual, repetitive loop. This was a turning point for me, as I realised how much my thoughts impacted my body and how out of balance my nervous system had become.

A key part of the DNRS program is learning to become the curious observer and being vigilant with your thought patterns. I realised my thoughts consistently revolved around illness and that I had a tendency for rumination and constant looping. It was interesting to learn that many others in DNRS recovering from severe chronic illnesses had similar repetitive patterns of thinking. Because the brain doesn’t know the difference between what is real and imagined, repeating negative thought patterns constantly is like re-living them. Each time I got stuck ruminating, I was producing more stress chemistry that was keeping my body in a fight/flight state and this wasn’t conducive to a healthy mind, body and spirit. Breaking this habit of thinking was extremely difficult!

When I started this work, I armed myself with every tool and trick I could find. I set alarms on my phone reminding myself to stay present. I’d distract myself by running through all the lyrics to a long song (Taylor Swift’s 10-minute one, obviously) or listing things I was grateful for from A to Z. I obsessively repeated Gabrielle Bernstein’s mantra: 'I forgive this thought and choose another.' I listened to Joe Dispenza talk about setting aside two hours for meditation as he needed time to quiet the chatter, and realised even the experts had to work at it. I learnt to redirect with grace and celebrate each time I pulled myself out of a looping thought, instead of berating myself. It was tough and it took real commitment. If thoughts are clouds, my mind hadn’t seen blue skies in a long time.

As soon as I started working on quieting my mind, something interesting happened. It was almost as though my brain tried to ‘fight back.’ When I stopped giving power to my thoughts and began redirecting them, new ones would appear tenfold, trying to pull me away from the peace I was attempting to cultivate. Tessa Malcarne, my neuroplasticity coach, puts it perfectly: 'Our brain is used to its most comfortable emotional response.' Joe Dispenza also talks about this phenomenon, our bodies are so accustomed to the stress chemicals running the show that, when we try to change that, they push back to keep us the same. I also began noticing how rumination would pull me in and physically affect my body, turning on adrenaline and activating my nervous system putting it into a sympathetic, fight-or-flight state.

Next, I went through a phase where I would wake in the middle of the night caught in an endless loop of chatter. It’s almost as though my brain knew my defences were weaker in the quiet of the night and it would choose this time to bombard me with all these seemingly big problems to solve. For about 10 months I experienced insomnia and spent 2-4 am spiralling in thoughts. Although looking back, I can see how trivial those thoughts were, in the moment, they triggered a physical stress response in my body. Why did I spend 2 hours one morning thinking of a ten-point essay in my mind on why a friend of a friend should break up with their boyfriend? My brain was being reactive, and downright silly!

Source: @saracstic.avo on Instagram

After this, I hit a phase where concentration and focus felt completely out of reach. I’d never had such a distracted mind in my life. I couldn’t sit still and focus on the simplest of tasks and found myself constantly caught in daydreams. It was interesting as my mind had shifted away from negative rumination, and instead was just off with the fairies. I felt aloof and was the meme above almost 24/7.

I persisted through these setbacks. Alongside this, I was diligent and consistent with my nervous system regulation tools. For me, this involved a lot of visualisations using the technique taught in DNRS as well as other bottom-up approaches such as breathwork, somatics, Qi Gong and Yoga. I believe that these practices go hand in hand. As the body begins to feel safe, the mind slows down, and as the mind slows down, the body feels safer.

I like the metaphor that thoughts are like paths in the woods. The unhealthy patterns I had followed for years were a well-maintained trail: familiar, easy, and worn smooth from constant use. But I was working to create new neural pathways and healthier ways of thinking. At first, carving out this new path is difficult, it feels like hacking through dense undergrowth - it’s much easier to stay the same and take the old well-trodden path. However, each time I redirected and chose new ways of thinking, the path became clearer. With practice and persistence, healthier thoughts are becoming my default, with less conscious effort. Meanwhile, the old ways of thinking are fading away, those pathways disappearing from view.

A few months into my practice I also learned that overthinking can often be a way to avoid actually feeling our emotions. David R. Hawkins explains this brilliantly in his book Letting Go. He shares that we can get caught up in a whirlwind of thoughts about an emotion, instead of allowing ourselves to feel them. When we truly surrender to the emotion, express it fully, and let go of resistance, the thoughts fade away. With the support of a holistic psychologist and by practicing JournalSpeak (a journaling technique for releasing emotions), I've experienced this to be true and have been able to find more stillness.

After months of persistence, I started to feel more glimmers of peace, a calmer feeling in my mind, a lightness, less racing thoughts, and more presence. I even had someone for the first time in my life describe me as having “zen-vibes”. Did I follow up this feeling of peace by having an over-the-top meltdown over a bad haircut? Definitely, yes. But the glimpse of blue skies motivated me to continue the work.

For years, I struggled with neurological issues and brain fog, despite trying various treatments. I realised that as my mind became calmer, my symptoms started improving in tandem. When we’re stressed, blood flow in the brain goes to the limbic system, but by quieting the mind and creating a sense of safety, my pre-frontal cortex, the thinking part of my brain, began functioning again. As other chronic illness symptoms began to dissipate I realised that this mental shift wasn’t just improving my mindset, it was reflected physically in my body too.

Recently I had a moment of realisation about just how much progress I’ve made in this space. I had an event repeat itself - nine months later. Seeing the stark contrast in my reaction to it, and the dramatic difference in my peace of mind showed me just how far I have come. Reading my old journal entries compared with now, my personal growth is evident. What once caused mental anguish, fear, reactivity and a heck of a lot of rumination, has been replaced with detachment, groundedness, and comparative calm.

I used to feel embarrassed reading back old journals, but now I realise that if I’m cringing a little at myself that means I’ve grown. Instead of judging how reactive and triggered I was nine months ago, I extend compassion to my former self, who was doing her best in the circumstances and with the capacity she had at that time. I also extend her immense love and gratitude for working so hard to make my mind more peaceful.

I can see now that I have more capacity to regulate my emotions and am learning to respond rather than react, but it’s more than that. It’s as though my entire experience of life is different. Things feel lighter, smoother, and more peaceful. And honestly, I struggle to put into words just how rewarding that is. I think of every moment I redirected my thoughts and every day that I showed up using my nervous system regulation tools, I can see how all those moments have culminated to lead me here.

Am I still human, and do I still get a little worked up? Yes. Am I still working for more stillness and peace? Yes. Would anyone close to me describe me as having “zen-vibes”? Maybe not just yet. I am continuing to work on my presence and becoming responsive rather than reactive. At the same time, I recognise I’m human and it’s a privilege to feel a mix of emotions. To desire and attach, to love, grieve and dream, to give in to unbridled joy, to live with enthusiasm and passion. My goal isn’t to be a completely non-reactive monk but to experience life’s emotions fully, process them, and respond calmly without getting caught in loops of rumination and stress.

I have an effortlessly calm friend, the kind of person who, when her wedding veil wasn’t at the venue on her wedding day, just shrugged. I used to envy that level of unshakable peace, wishing I could be the same instead of feeling so affected by everything. A few years ago, I even wrote in my diary, “It’s okay, I’ve accepted that I’m just not genetically wired that way and will never be that chill.” But neuroplasticity teaches us that the brain is always changing, if we stick to our practice it has NO CHOICE but to change. I clung to this idea as I persisted with the work, even when it felt like nothing was shifting. Now, I’m finally seeing real, tangible proof that it does work. My mind is changing, and with it, so is my experience of the world.

Practical tips:

• I am always singing the praises of DNRS, it’s the program that gave me the tools to truly change, you can learn more about it here

• This podcast episode by my neuroplasticity coach Tessa Malcarne gives lots of tricks for redirecting thoughts, this is helpful at the start to cut off patterns your brain is stuck in

• Consistency is important, nothing changes if nothing changes, and this work requires commitment. You have to find a source of inner strength that will allow you to override the brain’s natural tendencies

• The Kirtan Kriya is the meditation that got me back into meditation! This was especially helpful when my mind struggled to focus as it involves a mantra and a mudra (chanting and hand movements). I had an 80-day streak on this meditation at the start of the year, as I said - consistency.

• I LOVE this Michael Singer podcast episode about thoughts, I listen to this one when I know I am getting sucked into a looping thought

• Reduce social media, turn off notifications, and break the dopamine cycle! Taking a few months off social media helped my brain to reset. Less screen time is probably my number one trick for being more present (in fact, I might be due for a social media cleanse again now!).

• Passionflower tea. I took an introductory herbal course last year and did an assignment on passionflower. I was happy to come across this quote: “I have had patients tell me it’s like they have a talk radio station on in their heads, and they can’t find the off-switch. Passionflower is the off switch.”1 Drinking this tea before bed, to be present and quiet my mind, is part of my routine.

• ‘Habit stacking’ presence into my day. For example, my electric toothbrush has a two-minute timer, and I always use that as a reminder to stay present and focused.

When I first started brain retraining I worked hard on redirecting away from heavy emotions. If I was feeling a ‘negative’ emotion I taught myself ways to redirect it, and I focused on elevating my emotional state throughout the day. I would use all of the tools taught to me by the DNRS program to redirect and move away from certain emotions, and I would fake laugh my way through laughter yoga classes even when my brain just wanted to mope and complain. This was extremely beneficial for me!

Looking back, I can see many of the thoughts and emotions I was having were just learned responses and habits, and I needed to break that loop with some rigidity and by being strict with myself. I pretended as if I didn’t have any health concerns and broke my emotional ties to illness. At times I felt like I was lying to myself, but with time and repetition, these new thought pathways have become second nature and my natural way of being. Looking back, I can see that being in a state of nervous system dysregulation created thoughts that weren’t true as I was seeing the world through a lens of fear.

During this process I have also learnt not to label thoughts as ‘negative’ (hence my use of inverted commas for the word negative throughout this post) or judge myself for having them. Instead, I notice them, label and validate how I am feeling then move into a higher emotional state. This is a technique I learnt from my neuroplasticity coach Tessa Malcarne. For example, when I notice I am feeling an emotion, I will say to myself, “Ok Alex, I can see you’re feeling frustrated, that’s ok, of course, this situation is frustrating. Is staying in this emotion serving you or is there a higher emotional state you can move towards?”. I also love the quote from Gabby Bernstein, ‘I forgive this thought and choose another’. These techniques were a go-to for me and I would do this multiple times a day at the start of my brain retraining journey. For me, it was a way of redirecting with a bit more authenticity.

I can see that I needed this rigidity around certain thoughts. My brain was addicted to being in CAN chemistry (cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine) and was trying to keep me in that state. For example, I remember a time when I was starting a fight with my sister over nothing, my brain just needed a ‘fix’. I also look back to appointments I had with therapists before brain retraining and they were big, repetitive loops of thoughts and emotions without any true changes. I needed to disrupt my learnt way of thinking and being, even if it felt inauthentic or uncomfortable.

However, with time, my nervous system has gained capacity and resilience, and recently I have started to feel as though I have the strength to process some emotions that have been coming up. I have been learning to distinguish between true emotions and when my limbic system wants to keep me stuck in a lower emotional state. Usually when my thoughts are looping and repetitive and take over my mind, these are more of a limbic response where my brain is staying ‘addicted to its most comfortable emotional response’ (in the words of my coach Tessa), and this requires emotional elevation or tools to redirect. Other emotions that I feel are heavier and have a different energetic feeling in my body, these are the ones that need to be released. With the guidance of my holistic therapist Karima, I have been learning how to feel these. As somebody who grew up avoiding emotions, this has been a learning process!

This is almost an art form to learn as redirecting away from emotions, and moving towards them and FEELING them are total opposites.

Now that I am learning to lean towards certain, real and heavy emotions (not the limbic emotions), I am becoming aware of a learned automatic reaction in my body that tries to hide from emotions and runs away from them. This is a different feeling to redirecting with brain retraining, in that it feels different in my body – again this is just a felt experience that I am learning to distinguish with time as I become more and more regulated and connected to myself and my body. It is a little difficult to put into words, but if you know, you know!

In Primal Trust (another brain retraining program I have worked through), one lesson explained that our limbic system can categorise emotions as unsafe and this is why we avoid processing them. I am learning that it is this fear and resistance to emotions that keeps us stuck, not the emotion itself (I highly recommend the book Letting Go by David R Hawkins for a deeper examination of this idea). For example, I experienced a big emotion recently when I felt hurt by somebody, and it led to my lashing out in anger. This was described as the limbic system seeing this emotion, feeling fear around the hurt caused and thinking it would be too much to feel, and instead going directly into protect mode which caused the lashing out. Seeing how our limbic system is linked to our emotions was important to me. Firstly, in giving myself grace, as I am still gaining the capacity to deal with these emotions as I continue to regulate my nervous system. Secondly, knowing and understanding this, and that anger is my brain trying to protect me and keep me safe, will hopefully give me more impetus to take a deeper breath and move into a less reactive state next time.

With Karima we have spent a lot of time feeling emotions such as grief, anger and sadness that I experienced as a result of my time with chronic illness. In one of my earlier sessions with her, she led me through a meditation or ‘internal inquiry’ where I had to connect with my body and describe the emotions I was feeling. A pain in my chest that recurs sometimes came up and I described it to her, with her help we came to a description of the pain as feeling like I had been punched in the chest. Karima asked me about a time in my life when I had felt like life had punched me, I instantly connected this to my experiences with illness. I found I was scared to sit and connect more closely with the feeling in my chest, but with Karima’s guidance, we explored it. This caused me to have an intense emotional release. I shed many tears and we spoke about how hard being sick was for me. Karima helped me to see that when I feel an emotion and truly turn towards it and let myself feel it, this is when it can be released. After this, the pain in my chest transformed and was dulled! I had never experienced something like that before, where I felt the connection between my physical body and a specific emotion, it was quite an amazing moment! I have since noticed that when I am feeling heavier emotions I feel it in my chest, and try to run myself through the same process, where I don’t turn away from the emotion but tune in and feel it.

This is still very much a work in progress for me. I can see that during my time sick I was in survival mode, and I couldn’t process what I was going through. Now that I am coming through the other side I am starting to have these emotions come up.

Since I have started this work with Karima I have noticed, especially in the last month, that I have been able to feel more and feel into my body more. About two weeks ago I felt nauseous with anxiety – this isn’t a feeling that is common for me to experience at all! I became curious about it, stopped what I had been doing, sat with it and turned towards it, giving my body permission to feel whatever it needed to feel. I ended up bawling for a good half hour with big, heavy, sobbing tears. At times during my illness, I remember feeling like I needed to let out tears but they wouldn’t come, I would even watch sad movies or TV shows because I felt like I needed an outlet that would allow me to have some sort of release, but I wasn’t able to sit and cry for myself and my pain. It feels as though my body is coming out of survival mode now and is slowly processing these emotions.

Stay tuned, this is an area I am still very much learning and going through the motions of, and balancing the opposite practices of feeling with redirecting has been an interesting process for me.

This post is adapted from one originally posted on alexmeeka.com

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