(25 min read).

How we heal – the most important things you should know.

Did you know that from the moment we are born we are training our nervous system, our abilities, not only how to walk and talk, but also how to use our innate, (inborn) intelligence, inherited resources and our natural recuperation ability? For most of us it’s not something we spend a lot of time thinking about. It’s an automatic thing that we all do. Most of us are not trained to use the best of what we innately and naturally have. That is; to use the best of who we are and to challenge ourselves to evolve even further. When trained appropriately, these become as natural to us as breathing. This is the first step to becoming much more of who you are. Our philosophy at the College of Neuro-Training is based on knowing, understanding and training our genetic references as resources. Based on the premise that we all have inherited and learned resources built within our neurology, (our nervous system) and, as such, have the solutions to our own conflicts and challenges. You are your own solution

When the tension takes over and solution focus turns to problem focus.

When stressed, challenged, sick, or in financial difficulty people don’t think about going back and using their inherited references as the solution. That’s because they are caught in the spiral of their problems and the stress cycle. When caught in this stress cycle it feeds and creates even more problems leaving you blind to a better way of doing life. In affect you train your subconscious the wrong way. You train it to be problem focussed instead of solution focussed. This is the stressful way to live.

What is stress?

Basically, stress is our reaction to something. Our stress reactions occur when the demands put upon us by certain situations or thoughts, lead us to feel angry, frustrated, anxious or sick. Stress can be caused by our own internalised thoughts and feelings too. The things causing stress can vary from person to person. What is stressful to one person isn’t always stressful to another.

Is stress bad for you?

Not always. Stress is a normal part of life and small quantities of stress can motivate you and help you be more productive. Too many stress reactions can be harmful to your health. This is often called distress. It is when our stress reactions become a habit that it becomes more of a challenge for us. We begin to react to things without even thinking about. This then leads to other life challenging problems.

How do I know when I’m dis-stressed?

Everyone has different reactions to stress and the build up of negative energy that we call distress can create reactions that include:

Anxiety,  Worry,  Forgetfulness, Sleeping difficulties,  Bad dreams Irritability, Decreased concentration,  Lack of sex drive,  Lack of motivation, Nausea,  Indecision,  Muscle tension, Poor immunity,  Poor digestion,  Abdominal pain, Hormone problems,  Sweating,  High Blood Pressure, Inability to learn and remember the way you used to, Aches and pains Exhaustion, Lack of Recuperation and so many more symptoms.

The one that drives you into your physical disease the fastest – inflammation! That can lead to many symptoms.

What causes stress?

Stress is caused by a combination of internal and external events, (or the anticipation of them). How we see our own ability to manage a conflict will create internal chemical reactions that affect our body function. Sources of stress can vary from lack of confidence, work-related performance, money worries, family problems, unemployment, moving house, bereavement and divorce. Or it can be a combination of minor problems – which all grow into one big problem.

Does feeling stressed mean I can’t cope?

No, it just means you’re human. We are all different and we all react in different ways to different situations. Sometimes one needs to just stop and think about what it is they do and is what they do working well for them or not. Is what you do working for you? Maybe you’re just caught in a rut? Perhaps caught in the cycle of stress feeding stress? The first key to controlling your daily outcome is to take control of your own reactions. Admitting you feel stressed can go part way to helping you find a solution. Suppressing feelings and pretending they don’t exist, when really they do, leads to more tension and raises the stress factor even higher.

The Key to being Solution Focussed

The biggest challenge though, is the habit. When people are caught in the habit of poor health, poor lifestyle and bad relationship choices, that’s all they do. Bad habits just re-create themselves over and over. Unsupportive lifestyle habits are real hard to break. After all you have been training yourself for years to be the way you are now.

So the biggest question to ask yourself is: “Are your habits working for you or against you?”

Unless you replace your unsupportive habits with new and fresh supportive ones, the baddies will just keep taking over.

Here are some easy ways to start creating new habits. New habits that support you are also going to support your health and the life-style you want.

1. Break the stress cycle.

Use your own body to stop your stress responses. If your methods of coping with stress aren’t contributing to your greater emotional and physical health, it’s time to find healthier ones. There are many healthy ways to manage and cope with stress, but they all require change. You can either change the situation or change your reaction.

One way is to train you to move out of the stress mode and the survival cycle using Neuro-Training. Neuro-Training creates new options for your internal mechanisms. It is a way of generating new options for your internal reactions to change. It breaks the stress cycle and allows your nervous system to respond differently.

2. Control what you can

You can’t control everything around you – and too many of us get caught up in the things we can do nothing about. Focus on what you can control and make the changes that are within your own power. Let go of trying to change what is not within your control.

3. Identify your own stress reaction triggers

Breaking the stress cycle starts with identifying the sources of stress in your life. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Your true sources of stress aren’t always obvious and it’s all too easy to overlook your own stress-inducing thoughts, feelings and behaviours. Neuro-Training and Kinesiology is a highly effective way to re-train your ‘not-so-easy’ to fix stress reactions.

4. Set priorities

We all operate better when we are doing the things most important to us. Stop suppressing what is most important to you. Decide on what is most important in your life. This also puts into perspective the less important items. Focus on what’s important and allocate time accordingly.

5. Turn down the negative self-talk

It can be very noisy in our heads! Debates rage, judgements and opinions can run rampant. Throw away the judgements and resentment and learn to be open and trusting again. Each time you have a negative or stressful thought- ask yourself: “What is it that I do want?”

6. Keep things in perspective

Too much of the time we become subjective, especially living in our own stress reactions. We often live life through a false sense of perception. When we are anxious or scared we can project this onto others, blaming them for an outcome that really didn’t evolve through them at all. Learn to be more objective. Seeing the bigger picture can make a difference. Keep a balanced view on your life and activities. Move away from blowing things out of proportion and see them as impossible. If this is a bad habit for you then book in for a Neuro-Training balance and get sorted those subconscious patterns that over take your sense of reality.

7. Talk to someone or get some support

You don’t have to do it all on your own. If your head feels really full, it really can help to talk to a friend, family member or even a professional Neuro-Trainer or counsellor. This is very important if you are starting to stew on things and get stuck.

8. Reduce caffeine

When we are stressed we run on a faster timing. Consuming more stimulants makes this timing even faster, leading to physical anxiety attacks. Lessen your intake of coffee, tea, cola, bull drinks and other high caffeine drinks. Try and drink more water instead. Consume herbal teas that calm you such as chamomile, vervain, passionflower or take some magnesium to help you relax and sleep better.

9. Eat well, eat fresh

Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. Eat when your stomach most needs it, when you are hungry. Eat consistently and at regular times. Eat fresh foods. Look for food that is not in a packet. Eat fresh and feed the building blocks of your DNA.

10. Learn to let go

Stop dwelling on things. Learn to let them go. Use words like “Let it go”, “Chill” or “Breathe” to get away from your negative thinking. Positive self-talk is a great skill. When you are in the middle of internally combusting, breathe before you react and think of the implications.

11. Manage your finances

When your money situation is out of control, it creates enormous stress reactions. Get help and get your financial situation back in control, if it is causing you to feel upset. Neuro-Training has some wonderful ways to raise your financial intelligence and sort out the stress patterns you may have around money.

12. Learn and use relaxation techniques

This might be swimming, horse riding, yoga, meditation or even listening to relaxation recordings. Gardening, reading, sewing, watching a peaceful movie, listening to music – find something that relaxes you.

13. Regular exercise

A great way to manage stress and improve mood is exercise. Go for a walk. Play some sport. Even if it is only three times a week, or for an hour or so it is better than nothing at all. Moving burns off the extra adrenalin you create by being stressed. This turns down the immune system and leads to inflammation. Inflammation is a big disease activator. Moving your body helps move your mind. So get up and start moving now!

14. Thinking time

Make time to create the day: work out what you want to get from the day. Problem solve, look at different point of views. Make time to think things through and imagine what could be possible.

15. Use a task list

Manage your time and tasks realistically. List things and don’t keep them in your head. Tick them off as they are done. Ticking off each item as you complete it will give you a sense of accomplishment and allow you to stay more in control of your time.

16. Learn to forgive

People often carry a lot of anger about others – friends, work colleagues and family who they feel have let them down. Learn to forgive, as forgiveness reduces stress.

17. Improve your communication skills

Understanding others, how and why they react is highly effective for communicating better. The secret to why we react the way we do is often hidden amongst our facial characteristics. Discover more about Face Traits, why we react and why our loved ones react differently will help you understand others and their internal reactions and it’s also fun to learn.

18. Use visualisation – change the pictures

Picture a calming place, use a screen saver and have pictures on your desk of people and places that you associate with relaxation.

19. Laugh out loud

Researchers have found laughter lowers stress and stimulates the immune system. So choose friends who make you laugh, get a comedy DVD and go to shows and places that are fun and funny.

20. Learn to say no

Sometimes we just do too much. We are too nice or feel guilty if we say no. Consequently we are feeling overloaded with no time for what we really want to do. Think of a quick and easy sentence such as “Well, I would love to help you, however I have something else I have to do first…” Know your limits and stick to them.

Whether in your personal or professional life, refuse to accept added responsibilities when you’re close to reaching them. Taking on more than you can handle is a sure recipe for more stress.

21. Focus on what you do want rather than what you don’t want

When stress is getting you down, take a moment to reflect on all the things you want in your life. We often spend too much time focusing on what we don’t want. Our brain cannot ‘not do’ something. For example “don’t think of an apple pie right now” (what’s in your minds eye – an apple pie right!) Think of what you do want in life, rather than what you don’t want in life. It’s easier this way round.

22. Be more assertive

Deal with problems head on- but do it in a gentle manner. Do your best to anticipate and prevent them. If you’ve got an exam to study for and your chatty roommate just got home, say up front that you only have five minutes to talk.

23. Adjust your standards

Perfectionism is a major source of avoidable stress. Stop setting yourself up for failure by demanding perfection. Set reasonable standards for yourself and others and learn to be okay with “good enough”.

24. Clear out the toxic people in your life

Avoid people who stress you out and learn to say no to them too. If someone consistently causes stress in your life and you can’t turn the relationship around, limit the amount of time you spend with that person or end the relationship entirely.

25. Avoid the unhealthy ways of coping with stress

These coping strategies may temporarily reduce stress but they cause more damage in the long run: smoking, drinking too much, over or under eating, zoning out for hours in front of the TV or computer, using pills or drugs to relax, sleeping too much, procrastinating or perhaps filling up every minute of the day to avoid facing problems. Maybe you have been taking out your stress on others (lashing out, angry outbursts, physical violence) or withdrawing from friends, family and activities. In short, there is a ‘part of us’ that wants to survive. It’s a subconscious code for surviving that we can get stuck in too much of the time. Our survival cycle is not a bad thing. We all need it when our lives are at risk. The point is, our lives are not at risk every moment of the day. When you ‘try’ to survive your challenges at any cost, you risk causing more stress to yourself and others. Being locked in survival as a habit can become the basis of our stress reactions. Changing this lets our body and all internal mechanisms ‘live’ again.

Your Own Pockets of Wisdom

We have an enormous amount of internal strengths, resources and even wisdom. Just think about how many people in your ancestry that may have been teachers, scholars, specialised craftsmen, or people who had political power or influence. All that is a part of you. Each one of our ancestors had a special skill that we also have as part of our DNA.

…Most of us are not trained to use the best of what we innately and naturally have, to use the best of who we are and to challenge ourselves to evolve even further…

When we are sick or have a problem, the symptoms you experience are simply pointers to some kind of internal conflict in your life. Training you to be your own resource for these internal conflicts is a major focus for which Neuro-training is based because the solution is within you.

You choose – Feel better about your problem or get past your problem

Many practitioners work from the position of, “Let me help you with your problem,” because you, the client come to them with a problem. It’s a problem focussed model based on the authority of fixing you and is primarily a medical model approach. An important question for alternative health practitioners is:

“Do I want to help you do better with your problem, or help you to get past your problem?”

These are two very different contexts. At times practitioners try to find out why people have their problem, instead of how the person is maintaining the problem.

The importance of the ‘how’ in healing

Focusing on why you have a problem will help you understand some of the dynamics around the issue however it does not lead you to understand how you created the problem. This is an important aspect when using Neuro-Training with Kinesiology to overcome a conflict. In life and healing, if we spend too much time looking at why we have the problem, we may have a better understanding of the problem but if this method is over used, it will lead to justifying having the problem. In the end we have a story of why we have the problems but it leaves us without strategies or healing processes to move forward and adapt to it. Also, when we justify, we make it ok to have our current problem or circumstance. We begin to use language such as: “The reason I have this conflict is because, etc”. This focus results in having no reason to find constructive ways to move past the problem, only to consider the reasons for having it. As a result the problem never really resolves. This can lead to chronic illness patterns. The long-term result for some is that they feel much better about the original problem, but in truth they still actually have it. Have you ever heard anyone ever say:

“Oh yes, I still have the problem, but I feel much better about it!”

In other words, they have not got past their problem they have just learned to compensate for it. If we spend time looking at how we maintain the problem, we are open to observing our patterns that maintain our symptoms. This allows us to then form new strategies and also use Neuro-Training to find the resources to support these new strategies. Focusing on how we maintain our symptoms automatically sets our internal references to search for the solutions to heal in a much more pro-active way.

What we focus on expands

Subconsciously we are always attempting to heal ourselves. Our brain, that is, our neurology, is continually searching for ways to be better. There are two ways to do this. Move toward what we want, or away from what we don’t want.

Our thoughts and language are like a powerful rudder. They steer our hopeful projections and at every moment our subconscious listens to this…

If we move toward what we want the result feels great because we achieve what we want. If we move away from what we do not want we only feel relief on the basis that it has not caught up with us yet. You see; what we focus on expands. If we focus on the things we don’t want, we will unfortunately end up having that very thing because our brain cannot ‘not do’. It cannot do the negative. If I were to say, “Don’t think of a pink elephant” – what is in your mind thinking of right now? I bet it’s a pink elephant!  If you constantly move away from pain, anxiety, the conflict or the loss, you are in fact training yourself to move toward them. That is how our fears manifest too. Imagine an athlete in position waiting to start the race. What will help him win? The thought of “run to win”, “run to win”, or “don’t loose”, “whatever you do don’t loose!”

When we think about it, our thoughts and language are like a powerful rudder that steers our hopeful projections and at every moment our subconscious listens to this and acts out our thoughts.

Using  Neuro-Training has significant results when applied in a solution focussed way.

The Problem with Problem focus

From a brain or neurology point of view, working directly on the problem too much can reinforce problem orientation, that is, you sort out one problem and there’s another to take its place. So if we focus on the problem, and then another problem, and then another problem that is what our brain searches for; more problems. It will start to search for problems you had in the past and bring them to the surface of your conscious mind through pain, discomfort or a conflict in your life or relationships. Your subconscious always wants to do the best it can. Even if it appears it is not doing the best (through symptoms, pain and conflicts), it is attempting to live out its training, the best way it has been trained.

It’s all in the training.

Our subconscious will re-trace through our history banks to find another unresolved problem in our past, rather than tracing for solutions if not trained that way. This is a natural consequence of attempting to heal from a problem focus. One may say, “well, this is not a bad thing it’s sorting stuff out isn’t it?” To a degree yes, it is ok, however, it is how we do this process that is more important. The first challenge is our energy. It takes a lot more energy to heal using a problem focus and this energy could be used in so many other areas of our life. Our subconscious has a lifetime experience of unresolved challenges. We will always have unresolved problems buried deep in our subconscious. They will always be there. Focusing on these one by one would have us attempting to sort out a ‘life- time track’ of challenges that would just never have an end. Even if we had re-traced through all our suppressed illness and/or conflicts from our life experiences, we would then begin the search through out our ancestry! As a result we become saturated in problem focused living forever.

Solution focus

We will always have problems and challenges in life because that is life. In fact we wouldn’t feel truly alive if we were not challenged to some point. The bottom line is how we deal with those challenges. In being solution focussed using Neuro-Training and Kinesiology, we look for the solution. We look for what resources we have that will resolve the conflict. When our subconscious does its re-tracing process through its attempt to heal, we automatically find a resolve for the next subconscious challenge because we have been subconsciously trained to do this. In using the Neuro-Training Kinesiology approach we look for and apply the resources we already have to the issue. That way we set up to automatically adapt to challenges as they are presented to us.

……we wouldn’t feel truly alive if we were not challenged to some point. The bottom line is how we deal with those challenges……

Change your focus

You have many resources available to you in your subconscious and your super- consciousness, you just need to go and look in a positive solution focussed way. Contemplate the idea of directing your conscious mind to control your subconscious mind instead of the other way around. Change the direction of your thinking. Discovering how to use your talents and innate resources automatically gives you the innate power to find your own solutions. Using Neuro Training  enhances this two-fold. It’s not until one human runs the race and beats the world record that we begin to contemplate the reality that we can go beyond our current expectations. Challenge yourself to go beyond your current metaphor. Neuro- Training is a solution oriented working model for Kinesiology. Throughout all private sessions and teaching modules it has an established direction of using a solution-oriented approach so as to develop better health for long term healing. The primary focus is to get you past your problems. Through the College of Neuro- Training, we also train practitioners to use this approach in clinic. Redirecting people from focusing on their problems to focusing on their solutions is very powerful. It has an enormous influence on the results you want to achieve in your life.

Written by Jennifer Beasley Neuro-Trainer, Naturopath, Kinesiologist, Diploma of Naturopathy, Western Herbal Medicine and Nutrition. Dip Early Childhood, Associate Dip in Special Education. Director of Neuro-Intelligence Clinic. CEO and Director  for the College of Neuro-Training Australia and International.