Essentials - Setting yourself up for success (transcript)

So I’m going to talk about five different areas now, and these are really worth focusing on, so make sure that you are listening or reading these at a time you can dedicate to them. This information may be free and so you will likely treat it as such, and not import value to it.

If you can perceive it as material you have paid for, and assign it that value, and treat it as such, it will serve you better. This is material I teach in my courses to my practitioners, I teach it in my 1:1 session with clients but it’s material that might seem straight forward. However it’s about how much effort you put towards utilising it that really counts.

So I say this in all my courses, but what you put in here is what you get out. So if you listen to it in a distracted way that’s the energy you’ll get back from it. So forget that this course is free and pause here now and get a notepad and pen to take your own notes of things you feel you need to remember, so that you can really make this material work for you and assimilate it.

The five areas we are going to be covering are: alignment, speech, the pin-drop, acceptance, and the urgency to heal.

By the end of essentials, you will have a method of how to approach this work that will set you up for success, no matter what it is you are trying to achieve.

So firstly I am going to speak about Alignment - this is all about getting you to be the New version of you that you are working towards.

Currently you are driving through life in a car, and the car isn’t going where you want it to go. The car is driving in the wrong direction, giving you experiences that aren’t your dream experiences.

By addressing the stored emotions, energies and beliefs, that you might be working on with your practitioner, or on the courses you will be changing the way the car is facing and strengthening the engine, but also we can help to manually shift the wheels by using alignment.

And by starting with alignment we are making sure that we don’t keep going over the same pathways that we want to never go down again, reaching the same undesired destinations.

So to look at alignment, let’s think about what keeps us in those same pathways, or the Old You as I like to call it. Old You thinks the old thoughts that are keeping you stuck:

This might look like:

- Searching the internet for cures

- Discussing constantly how our body feels. 

- Considering how to plan our day because of limitations

- Predicting dips and crashes and reactions. 

- Comparing how our body felt today as per yesterday. 

- Looking for the meaning of our illness.  

- Researching on health forums / internet looking for answers

- Chatting to our Mum or Dad or best friend about how our body is.

- Checking food packets for gluten and other foods that we aren’t allowed.

- Body checking, scanning for change, assessing your condition.

- Woe is me thoughts, victim energy

- Booking hospital appointments, scheduling blood tests and discussing these.

Now the version of New You that we are trying to get to, you can ask yourself, are they doing these things? Old you is basically thinking thoughts that the New You doesn’t. So if New You isn’t subscribed to health forums, checking TikTok’s for the latest cures, neither should you be.

All of these thoughts are confirming that we are ill and keeping that programming going.

This can be very difficult to change, and it’s about not beating yourself up if you fall down one of these rabbit holes. Just aim for the majority of the day to not be in these thoughts. The more we can rid these thoughts from our minds the faster we move to where we want to go. The aim is for 80% of the day to be thinking in the New You. So if you catch yourself suddenly in a loop scrolling for answers, just say to yourself, “Cancel cancel cancel!” And physically move, get up and throw yourself into something that the New You would be doing.

Think about what hobbies the New You is going to do with all that free time that they have, and try and put your focus there. Buy some books that they might like to read, maybe its travel, maybe its a brand hobby. Have theses around your home so you have constant reminders pointing you in that new direction.

Remove things from your home that keep you feeling limited as well. So if, for instance, you currently can’t eat certain foods, just don’t keep them in the house- then you aren’t constantly thinking the thought, “Oh no I can’t eat that,” whereas if your cupboards are only filled with food you can eat, all you are thinking is, “Great, I just need to choose what I want. I am limitless, I can eat everything.” which equals a New You thought.

So be aware and think of all of your actions in your day, what thoughts you are using to program your future - are these aligned with the New You? Are you spending a lot of time on social media or on the internet or reading books about somatic work? How much of your day are you doing this?

This can be problematic for two reasons It isn’t just because you are spending time researching cures that your future You isn’t doing. The New You, doesn’t feel they have anything to fix, they are busy thinking about other things. So think, what does their social media look like? Fill fit with that and unsubscribe from the rest. The other reason that you want to unsubscribe from these spaces, especially ones around health, is because when you are anxious about your health, or have anxiety in general, you pick up beliefs much more easily. When you are looking for answers with a feeling of desperation, that boundary around your belief system can let more things in, and there is a lot of misinformation out there, no matter how well intentioned.

We can be consuming information that is just unintentionally giving us glass ceilings, limitations, that we will only later have to unpick, if we are able to see them.

I’ll give you an example - I had a head injury from a bike accident several years ago and I read all sorts of information linking brain injuries to dementia, to topics like a ‘leaky brain’ where it meant that my brain was more open to oxidative stress because, ‘the blood brain barrier was compromised’. Now I realise that that is absolutely not the case, but I suspect it prolonged my brain fog and my inability to concentrate, not to mention heightened my health anxiety the more I read about it.

And I know it isn’t the case, because I can get that answer from me, not any external authority.

So one of the things you can do now, which I really suggest doing, is quietly sitting and writing down every belief you feel you have picked up about your body. About any of your symptoms. About your limitations. I am not saying suddenly go out and eat gluten if you feel you’ve been told you can’t eat it, but I am saying at this point, observe the beliefs you have. Just state them out loud in order to let them go.

These might also be collective beliefs, such as:

• the collective belief that Gluten is intrinsically bad for you, or

• the collective belief that it takes however many weeks to heal X condition,

• the collective belief that you can’t heal a certain condition without surgery,

• the collective belief your condition is incurable or permanent,

• the collective belief that even if you can switch something off, your body can’t ever fully recover,

• the collective belief that if you have family members with a condition that you will get it,

• the collective belief that if your family has a history of heart conditions then you are more ‘susceptible to it’.

Remember, your genes are not your destiny and we have the power in doing this work to make changes but belief unlocks that ability to make changes, so make sure you aren’t carrying anything that is hindering your process.

This might be something that you will want to come back to and work on in a few days, or it might be something that just occurs to you as a topic comes up and you can quickly notice and release the beliefs around it. Just remember: any intervention we are doing, we are slipping it under the door quietly, rather than making a big song and dance about it, because we are continuing to keep our thoughts in - all is perfect, there is nothing to fix- and so it then will be with that new program running.

So catching our thoughts is going to be one of the hardest parts of this, because once we get into a panic, perhaps a symptom shows up, or we are run down, that is when the Old You thought spirals can begin and we get stuck in those cycles again of worrying, feeling doomed, and searching for the next thing.

The ability to catch out thoughts can be hugely increased by mindful activities and meditation. Meditation can be really helpful because it strengthens the pre-frontal cortex so it actually helps with your mood, it can make it easier to step into gratitude and the higher vibrational states of mind that the New You is going to be in a lot more so it naturally facilitates that alignment. It also strengthens our ability to be in the present moment, because the act of constantly taking you back to the mantra, or the guided mediation, or the breath (whatever form of meditation you choose), is strengthening this act of bringing you back to your present, and thus self-observation.

There are many different types of meditation you can choose from - Insight timer is a free app that has a huge amount of guided meditations on there, but see what your gut is telling you might be the best practice for you if this idea resonates with you.

I have a free meditation on Youtube called the Belief Meditation, which is also useful for alignment in and of itself. If used enough, ie. Once a day over a certain period of time, this can permanently break through loops about belief that are keeping you stuck, such as the belief that you can’t heal, the belief your body isn’t physically capable of healing, or the belief you aren’t enough.

But again, you need to be thinking - can you just slip this into your day without much focus on it? So just doing it in the morning perhaps straight after waking, and then getting straight back into the New You. If you can frame it as just setting up your day for success, it might feel less like you are fixing anything and therefore something that New You will naturally do. The video also has to really resonate with you, so if you listen to it and it just doesn’t feel relaxing or as if you are welcoming it in, then maybe check in with yourself and see if there is another meditation that might work better for you.

So meditation will help with keeping your thoughts more positive and it will also help make your brain become more neuroplastic, which means it is easier to form new neural pathways such as the thought,“everything is great and is everything is working out for me”. Part of what we are trying to step out of is the negative energy that comes with chronic illness: the woe is me, I’m never going to heal, this thing has just confirmed how hard my life is, I’m so unlucky etc.

So we can look at this in a really manual way when we choose to reframe our thoughts and this is a really useful tool. It shouldn’t feel like ‘fixing yourself’, because we are just focusing on mindset and trying to expand into a new way of thinking and then enjoy the trickle down effects of that. So we catch a negative thought - ‘Oh no the pain is back, this means X hasn’t worked, I’m doomed’ and we choose to reframe : I am having a dip - Dips are data! A dip is telling me something and that information is useful - my body is sending me a message and I get to listen to the answer.

Useful reframes can be:

• Instead of, “I’ve had a serious setback" it becomes there is more to learn and I’m ready for it.

• Instead of: I’m scared I’m going to fail because my food reactions are back becomes I know dips are part of my learning and also its normal to have an ‘off day’ even for people who aren’t ill, so I’m just going to shrug it off.

• Instead of: I’ve had a life of trauma and of difficulty and no one understands how hard it has been becomes I have received lessons that are so deep about resilience and compassion that has shaped me into someone who can better help and connect with others. My empathy training is second to none!

• Instead of: I am so restricted by X and Y and Z becomes I am so grateful that I discovered this recipe that I adore that never would have if I hadn’t been so restricted, I am so grateful that I met this person or found this exciting thing that only came about because of my restrictions.

When you really look and start training your brain to look for the nuggets of gold that have come about as a result of your difficult condition, because of your limitations, you will find that there are always some hidden in there, and its a question of practise to be able to find and access them. Reframing and finding the positive is a process, and it takes application - its a skill you can learn but it can be a great thing to add into your toolbox to turn things around for you.

Now with everything I am mentioning today, be mindful that you aren’t making yourself a big to-do list each day - check in with yourself and just ask yourself can I apply this information gently to myself and interrupt my thought patterns with love and not recrimination? All the time we are just gently steering ourselves into a more positive state.

Speech

Similarly, we need to think about Speech in terms of this alignment - our brains are always listening and so we want to be mindful about what we let them hear.

They have a negativity bias and the amygdala (the fear centre of the brain), is always searching on high alert for danger. And so when we hear, or read, or discuss something that might not be good for us it always registers. So if your brain is hearing “Oh I’ll be too tired after going to the shops” it is without a doubt going to be taking on the fact that going to the shops is dangerous and that this WILL happen.

In fact, listening to your voice is so powerful that we can use it to counteract beliefs and do the opposite. You absolutely want to be mindful and make sure you are thinking about every word you say, but also be mindful that you can instil really positive things with it. Your voice is very powerful because it is the closest that you will hear to your inner monologue (if you have one) and so your voice is the most persuasive in terms of defining your beliefs.

So you don’t want to hear you saying, “I can’t do this. I can’t do that. I can’t eat this. I’m terrible at that”

You DO want to hear you say,”I am so strong”,“Every day I feel better and better”, “I slept so well last night”. So plan affirmations wisely. They need to resonate with you and keep it simple and manageable - I suggest picking no more than three to make it sustainable, if that’s too much choose one a week and then change it. If it’s jarring and the leap is too big ie. “I feel amazing and have effortless strength”, on the week that you have a cold, then change it up so that it feels possible but not too far away, e.g. “Every day things get easier for me”.

The Mental Pin-Drop

It is essential that we use the tool of our attention well to create where we are going. So one of the first things I do is introduce the Mental Pin-drop idea with my clients. So picture a GPS system for your car- where is your destination that you are heading towards?

You want this mental pin-drop of where you are heading to be something that you can constantly revisit in your head. A snapshot of the future. You can make a vision board if you want to, but you can also just hold this mental image in your head, playing, like a two-second movie.

The whole time I was ill I had this mental pin-drop of myself getting well, but I wasn’t even aware I was doing it. It was how I mentally ‘labelled’ the future in my brain. 

I had no idea that I was constantly building in and calling in that image in my body by revisiting it. Because the brain has no idea of time in your memories, no past and no future, and it can’t tell the difference between your thoughts and your revisited memories. So if you visualise something in your head, your brain doesn’t know that it’s not true and not happening.

Now when we attach a strong emotion to that image it further anchors it inside of you. Think of all your painful memories that stick out, or really happy ones. Why is it they stick out? Because of the emotion that is stored with them. You don’t remember the boring days just walking down the street as a kid, but you remember the ones where someone shamed you, or did something unexpectedly amazing for you. So make sure your pin-drop is a scene, a future memory, where you really focus in on the feelings that are really high vibration like joy, awe, and gratitude.

You might be with a dear friend having ice-cream on top of a mountain, or maybe you’ve travelled abroad - the idea is that the pin-drop makes your healing, or your goal, non-negotiable. So if you’re currently bed bound, just being overseas implies you are now well. Add a high vibrational feeling to that and you’ve nailed the message.

Acceptance

One of the very best ways of keeping your mindset in the right space and being able to stay in the New You, is by accepting your body as it is.

This helps us step out of self-fixing mode, the urgency to heal, and more. Commanding acceptance over our body for how it currently is, and for every thing that we are focusing on and trying to ‘get rid of’ allows all of this tension to dissipate. It stops the push-back and the separation and the division in our bodies and allows our body to unite as one. Because what we resist persists and this resistance is actually staying with us and affecting our thoughts.

And so this is a technique where you place a hand on your heart, and then focus on all of the pain in your body, all of the areas that you are struggling with, all of your symptoms and you state:

 “I completely accept my body as it is right now and I am completely fine with its current state”. Or whatever words resonate to that effect with you. Normally I wouldn’t suggest focusing on your symptoms but for this one minute of the day, its useful to lean in to where that resistance is.

You may want to specify certain areas of the body as well.” I completely accept my stomach right now and I am completely fine with it just as it is”.

This immediately commands that energy of disconnection to disappear and actually facilitates the brain to stop symptom-focusing and body-scanning. Because once the brain can accept the state it is in, it then stops trying to fix it and THEN it can actually start focusing on the New You you are trying to create and what they want to be thinking.

Don’t underestimate how powerful this simple technique can be. What is more, because it only takes a minute to do, you can just do it every day, first thing in the morning, and it won’t affect your mindset negatively because it is such a quick intervention.

The urgency to heal

You might have a target age or a deadline that you feel you need to be healed by, or you might be desperate to come off medication because you don’t want to be taking phar maceuticals. You might feel really challenged by the idea of a new condition or a symptom that has popped up and you feel the need to have it gone quickly. Just as before, thinking about this urgency to heal is confirming that there is something to fix. 

So we want to talk more about the idea of ‘expansion’ rather than ‘fixing’, completely steering away from language even around ‘healing’. The analogy is more about what are we ‘growing into’, what are we ‘expanding into  ’ rather than any repulsion away from anything. Because the problem around fixing is implying a disconnect in the body. It is creating an energy of separation.

We start isolating a part of us and send anger that way. So we look at our belly that is in pain from having eaten something that didn’t agree with it and we isolate it as ‘other’. We see our belly as separate from us and get angry and frustrated at the belly. We feel frustration at this part of us and we hold that in the body. That tension is keeping us routed in that state.

The focus on timelines, on needing to heal, is just as problematic and keeps the tension going. So we need to be slipping in all of the interventions that we are doing, whilst all the time confirming in our body that there are no problems, there is nothing to fix.

To this end, just like with the acceptance technique, it can be useful to identify all of that ‘need’ to heal and release those thoughts and beliefs and emotions to help with alignment. So this might look like beginning with realising that you are overly-focusing on a deadline, on a symptom; you notice that you’ve gone back into Old You pathways - perhaps you are scouring the internet for the next new cure.

So awareness comes first - catch your thoughts - and don’t worry even if you are one hour into a rabbit-hole doing a deep dive on the Nervous System, don’t berate yourself, just observe and ask yourself:

What it is I am worried about? And perhaps you hear: I’m never going to be well again.

You then immediately state that belief to release it - maybe put your hand on your heart if that feels good, or otherwise just let it go, “All my worries that I’ll never be well again”.

You can ask yourself, Is there anything else? And just list what comes up that is keeping you in that resistance state:

• All my urgency to heal.

• All my need to be off my medication.

• All my need to be well.

• All my anger at myself for not being able to do X at the moment.

• All my frustration at my condition, All my anger at X and Y and Z.

Once you have cleared the air like that and got all of that resistance out of you, you can then just state an affirmation to redirect you back into the New You- whatever feels right, maybe’ its: I know every day life is getting easier and easier for me, every day wonderful things are happening, I know I’m stepping into my best years and exciting things are happening to me every day.

It might be easier to list affirmations around just positivity and not directly about the body yet ie. I feel strong, if that isn’t quite where you are at and so it won’t feel believable. Using affirmations where there’s an ambiguity there that will allow in good things can be helpful.

I hope you’ve found things here that have resonated with you - it can be a good reminder to come back to this information and just check in with yourself if you’re keeping on track every so often. Hopefully the knowledge here will help steer you to focus on the learnings of your inner world and all the exciting things that you have now opening up for you, and to keep that focus on that expanded outlook and those opportunities that are completely available to you the more your attention is on them.