Show #228 – Ashok Gupta: How Brain Retraining Leads to Health and Happiness

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And on this week’s show!

I am thrilled to bring you part 2 of the “brain retraining” work of Ashok Gupta this week, one of the wonderful resources I’ve found, investigating a long term issue of mine that I’d so dearly love to nip in the bud. If you missed show #213 I highly recommend you start there or at least go back after this one. Ashok suffered from ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, around 25 years ago when he was studying at Cambridge University. Through neurological research that he conducted, he managed to get himself 100% better. In his darkest moment of health he made a promise to himself that if he figured out how to get himself better, he would commit his life’s work to supporting others, as he found so many people suffering the same symptoms and illness on his own journey. He then set up a clinic to treat others and then published the well-known recovery program known as the Gupta Program in 2007. His mission: To help people retrain their brains and nervous systems to respond as required – NOT as if it’s a state of emergency all the time. He has published several medical papers and is continually researching chronic conditions that don’t resolve despite ‘people doing everything right’. Here is a published study of a randomised clinical trial of women suffering from fibromyalgia – very promising results. I’ve suspected for some time now, that my nervous system and immune response have started having irrational responses to even the slightest of change or stressor as a ‘hangover’ from a negative reaction to anaesthetic and experiencing CIRS from mold 4 years ago. Hayfever from air fresheners; palpitations if I even walk through a mouldy house, or past an air-con system that’s dirty; palpitations from any medications my doctor trialed on me for thyroid/metabolic support to the point of not being able to take them; I get muscle twitches when at a traffic light near a phone tower. I started to wonder if it was a nervous system ‘PTSD’ situation even though of course CIRS and mould illness are and were very real. Turns out, I was onto something. Can we rewire these reactions when we’re no longer in chronic danger/ill health and return to lasting health and happiness? Can we teach our nervous system that it’s ok and we’re not in danger? Ashok Gupta believes we can and his program has achieved results for many people healing from ME/CFS, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, CIRS, EHS, Anxiety, and more. So, in this follow up conversation, now 3 months into the program myself and experiencing promising results, I’m excited to dive into more detail. Enjoy the show!

The questions I asked Ashok:

You healed your own CFS by applying techniques and creating new ones, that helped you rewire your brain and it then begs the question: Do we have CFS forever or relapse constantly, or do we have an initial health event that the body then keeps repeating beyond the initial experience of the illness?
How do we start to feel within ourselves that we can fully hold space for how terrible we feel in the present moment, ie it’s not in our heads, while at the same time, healing and designing the new brain pahtways that supports health and happiness?
How relevant is the emotion of fear in all of this?
What have been some success stories in recent years that have led you to see that this program was going to support people beyond CFS and into other chronic illnesses and sensitivities?
While we’re healing our nervous system and the loop in our brain that is broken (we can recap those things too briefly) it’s not necessarily going to be all smooth sailing is it: Let’s talk about dips on the road to health and happiness?
Dedication: In a world that has us go, go going, we’ve almost forgot to connect deeply to our desires for greater health. There’s a sort of “Oh yes I’d love to feel better, but my deadlines are crazy this week”. How can we put the fire in our belly to prioritise our healing over to-dos and deadlines?
Now obvs you don’t teach techniques outside of the program not because you’re stingy but because they sit in a very specific order within the Gupta Program…why do you ask people to give it 6 months?
Do you believe/have you seen that the longer people do these exercises and the practices you teach, the more resilient they become overall? (Science behind what relaxing the nervous system/retraining the brain does for hormones/genes/telomeres… there’s some exciting stuff there)

And many more!

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Low Tox. Happy us. Happy planet

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