Unstoppable Body and Mind

In this Episode I have the pleasure of interviewing Charlie Merrill,a well-known physical therapist specializing in the mind-body approach, to discuss the importance of emotional and physical healing in patient care. Learn more about how pain and many bodily symptoms are frequently generated by the brain as a protective state rather than only by tissue damage, and the importance of distinguishing primary neural drivers from secondary physical changes (tightness, weakness, spasm, swelling) that may resolve when the protective state is addressed. We explore how emotions and fear can impact physical pain and movement, with Charlie explaining concepts like "smudging" - where the brain loses clarity in perceiving the body - and the importance of introducing prediction errors to update harmful pain patterns.   We cover practical applications including working with athletes, managing acute vs chronic pain, and the role of movement in healing, with Charlie emphasizing that the brain learns through mistakes and surprises, and that movement is crucial for feeding the brain accurate safety information. You can find Charlie Merrill on his website https://www.mperformance.com/ Email: charlie@Mperformance.com Listen for more, click subscribe, and share with someone who wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind!

You may have heard of the Love Language concept- that there are 5 main "Love Languages" which represent the ways we receive love best.  Most of the time this concept is used in relationships, but what if we turned them inward?  Self love is the biggest tool to recovery, so in this episode we explore the ways you could apply the five love languages to YOURSELF! Self-love isn’t indulgent — it’s regulating to your nervous system. It’s actually the kindest thing you can do for the people around you, to practice self love!  Read that again and let it sink in. Listen for more, and click subscribe because this year I'll be recording more shows and bringing on some awesome guests!

Here's a quick recap of my 2025, where I took a step back from coaching, focused on Grief Recovery, and explored other things that brought me joy. The biggest change was my name- going from "Betsy" to "Elle" for my 50th Birthday.   *Correction- at about 6:40 I meant to say "placebo", instead of "nocebo."  Hope that makes more sense. Listen for more, and click subscribe because this year I'll be recording more shows and bringing on some awesome guests!  

In this episode, we welcome Jake Trembath, a dance teacher from Utah, who shares his journey from discovering dance as a social outlet to using it as a tool for psychological healing and brain rewiring. Jake explains how dance can help process emotions, improve self-love, and create a flow state that is beneficial for personal growth. He discusses the impact of dance on mental and physical health, highlighting its ability to rewire the brain, improve memory, and treat depression. The episode also covers the dynamics of lead and follow in dance, how it relates to masculine and feminine energies, and the importance of creating a safe space for self-expression.   Jake's community, Soal Coast, and its various retreats and events are spaces where people can experience these transformations, check them out below.   00:00 Introduction and Special Guest Announcement 00:34 Jake's Journey into Dance 01:55 From Dancing to Teaching 03:05 The Healing Power of Dance 05:17 Understanding Attachment Styles Through Dance 10:23 The Role of Self-Love in Dance 22:52 Creating Safety in Dance 24:56 Discovering the Power of Safe Dance Environments 25:59 Building a Supportive Dance Community 27:26 Health Benefits of Dance 29:34 Overcoming Personal Barriers Through Dance 40:17 The Flow State in Dance and Life 43:46 Upcoming Events and Retreats 45:41 Rapid Transformation Through Dance   You can find more about Jake and Soul Coast events on the website: https://soulcoast.dance/ Instagram @soulcoast.dance

Wow, I had an MRI done on my back and I talk about my surprising results in this episode.  I’ve had some previous back issues- a snowboarding injury and a mid back problem with my rib that developed during pregnancy.   A couple times in the last few years that my back “went out” for a few days (last time was over a year ago.)     I do not have chronic back pain, and I do not have to restrict my activity.   But if I had pain and numbness and these same MRIs results, I could qualify for disability.    MRI and X Ray results actually do not accurately predict the amount of pain someone is in.     Structural changes in the body are actually normal with age.   And addressing normal degenerative changes with surgery is really nothing more than a placebo.   We now know it’s common for pain free people to have bulging discs, torn rotator cuffs, torn meniscus of the knee, hip labral tears.   We just haven’t been doing MRI’s on pain free people to see that.   So here are the results if you want to read them- Right paracentral disc protrusion at T5-6 with mild mass effect on the ventral aspect of the cord. L2-3: Diffuse disc bulge extending 2.5 mm into the thecal sac.  No spinal canal or neuroforaminal stenosis. L3-4: Diffuse disc bulge extending 3 mm into the thecal sac.  Mild spinal canal stenosis.  Mild bilateral neuroforaminal stenosis. L4-5: Central disc protrusion measuring 16 mm in width and extending 5 mm into the thecal sac.  Mild spinal canal stenosis.  Mild bilateral neuroforaminal stenosis. L5-S1: Central disc protrusion measuring 18 mm in width.  Moderate to severe bilateral neuroforaminal stenosis.  No spinal canal stenosis. IMPRESSION: 1.  Central disc protrusion at L5-S1 with retrolisthesis measuring 6 mm.  Moderate to severe bilateral neuroforaminal stenosis. 2.  Central disc protrusion at L4-L5 with mild spinal canal stenosis and mild bilateral neuroforaminal stenosis. 3.  Diffuse disc bulge at L3-4 with mild spinal canal stenosis and mild bilateral neuroforaminal stenosis. 4.  Diffuse disc bulge at L2-L3 without spinal canal or neuroforaminal stenosis. 5.  Modic type I endplate changes at L5-S1 with Modic type I endplate changes. 6.  Straightening of the lumbar spine on the sagittal view which can be seen in the setting of muscle spasm.   Below are some of the research articles I mentioned:   -Takatalo- 50% of healthy 21 year old Finns had at least one degenerative disc and 25% had a bulging disc. -Boos- 73% of adults without back pain had bulging discs.  -Briggs- hip labral tears in 89% of pain free young athletes 16 years of age or older, & 56% of pain free athletes 16 years or younger. -S Rajasekaran- Delivery of MRI results affects pain and healing. -Karayannis Fear of movement is associated with trunk stiffness.   If you are a woman experiencing chronic neck or back pain, I am forming a group especially for you!  Details to come soon.

Today I have a special guest, a leader in the field of Mindbody medicine and President of the ATNS (Association for Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms, formerly PPDA), Dr David Clarke. Dr Clarke practiced Gastroenterology in Portland from 1984 to 2009, treating over 7000 patients whose symptoms were not explained by diagnostic testing.    In this episode, Dr Clarke summarizes Pain relief Psychology.  With research based methods teaching patients to take their focus off the symptom, shift attention to brain, and feel the emotions or deal with life stressors.   Responding to chronic pain or symptoms this way rewires the brain, so that symptoms can be eliminated instead of just managed. Listen to hear more!   Find Dr Clarke and the 12 question quiz on the ATNS website-  https://www.symptomatic.me/   Dr Clarke's challenging patients course https://ppdassociation.org/online-course   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com   Transcript- Automatically Generated: This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 135, Treating Neuroplastic Symptoms with Dr. David Clarke. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome. We have a special, special guest today. This is Dr. David Clarke. Welcome. Great to be with you, Betsy. Well, we are so glad to have you here. So Dr. Clarke is one of the pioneers and leaders in this field. The head of the PPDA, which is now the ATNS, we can talk about what all of these initials mean and acronyms. But why don't we start with a little bit about your story, coming from being a Western physician to what you do now? Yeah, I didn't know anything about this. The first seven years of my formal training and education, you know, it's kind of embarrassing to admit as a physician that nobody ever mentioned the idea that your brain could cause serious pain or illness in your body, in the complete absence of anything wrong structurally or with your organs. But then I encountered a patient, I didn't know the first thing about diagnosing or treating. In year eight of my formal training, she was referred to us at UCLA where I was in training by another university because they couldn't find anything wrong to explain her symptoms. She was actually averaging one bowel movement per month, despite taking four different laxatives at double the usual doses. We did some specialized testing on her that also was normal. I was doing her exit interview and basically telling her she was just going to have to live with this because there wasn't anything more we could do. But just so the conversation wouldn't be over in two minutes, I started asking her about stress. She didn't really have any. You know, her current day life was really going just fine. But when I asked her about stress earlier, she started talking about having been molested as a girl by her father. Unfortunately, not just once or twice, which would have been bad enough, but hundreds of times. And I had never heard anybody say that before. I didn't know what to do with that information. I had no formal training in how to respond to that. But I fell back on basic instincts as a doctor, which is to try to get the story. When did it start? How often did it happen? When did it stop? Those kinds of things. And she was telling me the story in a perfectly calm tone of voice. It didn't look like she was distressed by this at all. If you didn't know better, you would think that, and I didn't know better at the time, you would think that she had completely processed this information and had moved on. And yet she has this terrible physical symptom with no explanation for it. So I didn't think the two things could possibly be connected, but they were both very striking. So I had vaguely heard of a psychiatrist at UCLA that was interested in conditions like this. And I thought maybe it'll help her to live with this a little better. So I connected her up with Harriet Kaplan, who was a psychiatrist and forgot all about her. Until I ran into Harriet in an elevator three months later, and I've told this story many times before, but this was the elevator ride that changed my career. Because in making conversation with Harriet, it turned out she had cured this patient with less than three months of counseling. And the idea that you could alleviate a serious, real physical symptom just by talking to somebody, that was nowhere in my medical education or training. And I thought, you know, if I'm going to be a complete doctor, I should know a little bit about this. So I got Harriet to teach me how she thought about these things. And I thought, you know, maybe I'll see a couple of patients a year that have this concern or this issue, and I'll be able to use this information, and get the patient over to whoever the Harriet is in my medical community. And I was, you know, started practice in Portland, Oregon a few years later. And I was wrong on multiple counts. First of all, there weren't any Harriots in Portland. I would send patients to mental health, they would get cognitive behavioral therapy, it wouldn't help them, and they would come back and they say, you know, now what do we do? And so I did, you know, I tried to help them by trial and error. And I'm confident I wasn't very good at it in the beginning, but even as a bumbling beginner, I was helping people. They were having improvement that they weren't getting from the rest of the healthcare system. So, you know, that was back in the 1980s. Today, it's been 7,000 patients I've treated like this. It was 250 or 300 every year, which was another shock for me, one out of three of my patients. And I just got better and better at it as time went on. My first book, which is called They Can't Find Anything Wrong, came out in 2007. And then I started getting invitations to speak. And then I met other people who were doing this work, which I'd never met before. And we founded a nonprofit in 2011, which is now the Association for Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms. And you came to our conference in Boulder just six weeks ago. Yeah. That's where we met officially. And I realized how tall you are in real life. I look a lot shorter on Zoom. Yeah. You said it's your superpower to look short on Zoom. And yeah, that I have to say was such a cool conference. It was really, really amazing just being around all of these people who we've read their books, we've followed podcasts and done research and read a lot of works and studies that people have put out. And a lot of those big name people were there. It was kind of the everyone who's anyone of this world, the mind body world. It's really true. Yeah. The speakers we had were tremendous. I mean, I've been doing this all these years and I learned a lot from them. And the research is something we haven't had before. Just in the last mainly three years, there has been gold standard randomized controlled trials of the treatment methods that we recommend at the ATNS. And they've been getting stunningly good results at universities across North America, everywhere from Halifax to Los Angeles is showing the power of first of all, focusing on relieving people's symptoms like that first patient, not just helping them live with it, but actually relieving it and focusing on stress in people's lives, trauma, the long-term impact of adversity in childhood, other life challenges. When you do that, people actually get better. Yeah, yeah. And it's not just digestive issues, as we know. Like that can be a main one. That's what brought me to the work was ulcerative colitis and irritable bowel. Yeah, absolutely. That's how I started. But when people found out that I was doing this kind of work, they started sending me mysterious cases with symptoms from head to toe. You know, I didn't, I have to say, I didn't see that many with migraines, but all kinds of things, dizziness, itching of the skin was one, back pain was a big one, fibromyalgia, pelvic pain, pelvic pain was very common in my practice. I had a whole slew of gynecologists that would send me patients that they couldn't find anything wrong with the pelvis, and yet it was very painful for people. Some of them had genital or bladder pain as well. So, you know, joints, skin issues. Genital urinary problems, like incontinence could have a mind-body component, right? It should be checked for, that's the thing. What we emphasize is, you know, we're not going to have this mind-to-body connection in every single case, obviously, but there are a lot of people it should be checked for to get a complete evaluation. Yeah, I personally know that because I had incontinence issues during a super stressful time, and I also just had four kids. So I thought, well, this is just my life. I'm just going to have this now. But turns out I don't have that anymore. So, but I read Dr. Sarno's book when I first, because I found out about this stuff kind of like 2019, I think, 2018-19, a little before, I think, Cureable came out. I didn't really know about the PPDA. I kind of found Sarno first, and he did say genitourinary issues. So I just got curious, and I started noticing some patterns with incontinence that I was like, oh, it's only certain times. It's right at the end of a conversation, right when I get home in the driveway. Not the whole ride home, just right when I get home. No, it's good that you had the insight to figure that out. That's what a lot of practitioners call gathering evidence, that it's not an organ-based or structure-based condition. For example, if the symptom moves from place to place, or

Fellow Physical Therapist, Jim Prussack, joins me today for an interesting interview about his experience moving from PT to pain reprocessing Coach. We discuss the principles of PRT (pain reprocessing therapy), and how we treat differently using a mind vs body based approach. Check out Jim at https://www.thepainpt.com/ >>> If you have not yet given my podcast a rating or review, PLEASE do that here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543

This Meditation will help you find and process your emotions.   Many of us have learned to subconsciously repress our emotions, to talk ourselves out of them or judge ourselves for having them.   But we also know that what you resist persists.   So sometimes the best way to “get rid of the emotion” is actually to lean into and embrace it.   Emotions are just sensations, and can not hurt you as long as you don’t resist them.   Allowing your emotions and learning to feel them safely will prevent them from being expressed through your body.   Today’s meditation is based on Dr Howard Schubiner’s “Embracing Emotions Meditation” from “Unlearn Your Pain.”   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com  

Join me today to hear Hypnotist, Melissa Tiers, as we discuss integrative hypnosis and how it helps with chronic pain. Melissa has been training clinicians in the use of hypnosis for pain relief for over 25 years and her own chronic pain history was pivotal in the creation of her pain protocols.   Melissa struggled with years of migraines and is now migraine-free through this approach (as long as she stays congruent!  Listen for more details as to what that all means...)   We discuss the unconscious lens, how to be more mindful, and how to change your memories through memory reconsolidation Addressing the subconscious directy is the fastest way to see change. Melissa Tiers is a multi-award winning author, lecturer, key note speaker and hypnosis trainer. She is the founder of The Center for Integrative Hypnosis, co founder of The Ethical Coaching Collective and creator of Coaching the Unconscious Mind. Melissa has earned three IMDHA Pen and Quill awards for her books, Integrative Hypnosis, Keeping the brain in mind, and Integrative Hypnosis for kids and teens:Playing for change. Check out "Integrative Hypnosis for Pain Relief" by Melissa Tiers Thursday, August 8, 6:00-8:00 pm EST Sign up here: https://www.centerforintegrativehypnosis.com/offers/FNGSVfrz/checkout   Find Melissa at https://www.melissatiers.com/   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com            

Today I interviewed Renee Kammer, who has an amazing healing story.  From 30 years of chronic pain and 5 years being bed bound, to now hiking, biking, and gardening. Renee had several diagnoses, including: Stiff person’s syndrome, Ulcerative colitis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Ankylosing spondylitis, Fibromyalgia, Headaches, Migraines, Back pain, Hip pain, Anxiety, Depression, Pelvic pain/ IC, Chronic fatigue, Chest pain and High blood pressure.   Renee joined Alignment Academy and went through all of the exercises in Dr Schubiner's workbook to unlearn her pain.   She got off 14 medications in the last year, and has been feeling better and better!   She now has more joy and hope in her life, and is even starting a baking business with her new found time and energy. Listen here for Renee's story.   And if you want to apply the work Renee did to your life this summer, be sure and check out my Book Club Integration Group! https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/book-club-integration-group Transcript- Automatically Generated: This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, episode 131, Life After 30 Years of Chronic Pain with Renee. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. Hello, my loves. Today we have an amazing episode, an amazing testimonial from Renee. I want you to listen to her story and apply anything that you can to your life, to what you're going through. Hi, everyone. Welcome. Today we have a special guest, Renee. She has such an amazing story. So welcome, Renee. Hi, it's good to be here. Great, great. It's so good having you. Renee has been in my coaching group, Alignment Academy. Oh, I was going to look up how long. Less than a year, I think, right? I think it's been since November, December. Yeah. So about like six months, seven months. And you've made such amazing progress. You were already on your way of this journey of like, getting rid of some medicines and some things. We'll go into your story, but watching your progress has been amazing. And I think it will be really inspirational for people. So let's just go ahead with maybe just a little bit about yourself and how you got to having chronic pain and the symptoms that you had. So my name is Renee. I live in Ohio and I grew up just across the river in Kentucky. I have two kids, a son who's 14 and a daughter who is going to be 17 next month. I've been married to my husband Justin for 23 years, and I love life. When I go to tell my story, it always starts when I was younger because as far back as I can remember, I remember carrying around Pepto-Bismol, because my stomach was always upset as a kid. As a kid, yeah. Yes, and it was kind of a family joke, you know, that she always has that Pepto with her. But my stomach was always upset, and I can see now that was just a lot of anxiety and worry. But there were just, there were several things that had happened with friends and in my life. When I was about 16, that I started getting chronic pain then. And so my story goes back over 30 years of chronic pain. It's honestly, when I think about it, it can be a bit overwhelming to see that the majority of my life, I've not known anything but pain. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We're getting deep fast here. But there's a happy ending though, you guys. Just very happy. But yeah, that's a lot, right? It's a long time. It's a long time. And so although I've had much easier years here and there coming and going, my body always managed to drag me down. And so I guess the relief that I feel now at being free from pain and not living in fear is just, it's so incredible. I have not felt like this the majority of my adult life. That is an amazing transformation. It's crazy. Yeah. Okay. So as far as your diagnoses that you've had or that you've been diagnosed with, do you have kind of a summary or a list so we can have an idea of what you were diagnosed with and how severe it was? So my latest diagnosis was actually stiff person syndrome. That was the last two years, which is a muscle disease, which they thought it might be autoimmune. But I think I proved that one wrong. I've been diagnosed with that when I have ulcerative colitis. I've been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis for years. I was treated for enclosing spondylitis, which is just another form of arthritis. I've been treated for years for fibromyalgia, for headaches and migraines, back pain, hip pain, anxiety and depression. There were years that I went through therapy for pelvic pain and intercistal cystitis, chronic fatigue, chest pain, high blood pressure. All of those were diagnoses that I've had. And years actually include a lot of autoimmune ones too, which is kind of on the rare side. That's an area where that can cause physical damage and physical disease, and also can be regulated by the nervous system, can be controlled by the brain's interpretation of safety or danger. So you really defied some odds here. You're kind of the unicorn. You know, when reading the book, I read what Dr. Schubiner had to say about those diseases, but I decided that maybe it wasn't true for everyone who had that. And I was going to give it an honest shot and see if it really, you know, if it helped me. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so this is fascinating. Like, how bad was it as far as like, what did your daily life look like at kind of at its worst? And then how did you come to this work where you were just like, I'm going to give it an honest shot and just see what happens. I have had a life that was very active. My kids were active. I had had jobs. I had had a life years ago that I loved, that I managed to do well in despite some chronic pain. And then about five years ago, when chronic pain took over my life, I went from being an active wife and mom and sister and friend and church member and all of volunteer to living at home in my bed. I was in my bed all of the time. The things that I needed, my extra water or snacks, were just a few steps out of bed, so I didn't have to travel far. People came to my house to see me, to visit. I didn't go visiting. I didn't attend very many of my kids' games, get-togethers. I stopped all my volunteer work, which was really heartbreaking for me. I used to teach. I wasn't able to do that anymore. I didn't get to do a lot of my work at the church, which really, it all just really made me sad. And there was just so much that I couldn't participate in because unless it happened from my bed or my couch, then it didn't happen at all. And I wasn't going to live that way the rest of my life. My kids had things going on, and I wanted to be a part of my husband's life, my family's lives. And so I started looking for a way out of that. Yeah. And then how did you come to this work, and how did that go for you? I had downloaded the Cureable app, and I think I probably got it when it had a couple months free. And then the subscription snuck up on me, and I thought come out of my bank account, and I was like, oh, you know, I've not even used that. I had better go try it out since I just paid for it. I better go see what's on there. And so I read some of it and thought, I don't know about this. This is different. Oh, really? Yes. In all of my years of being sick, I just had not come across any of this mind-body work, which really blows my mind. And so I was researching, I came across your Instagram. I was researching some ideas that I had found out from the Cureable app, and I listened to the success stories. And oh my goodness, if these people can do it, why can't I? I mean, I had tried everything, and I was just so done with being in pain. It absorbed my days. Yeah. And you were taking a lot of medications too, right? Yes. And have you already started getting off some of those medications? Because you came off quite a lot of medications. Was that all just since Cureable or was some of that before? Some of that was before. I went to the ER last spring with high blood pressure. It was extremely high. And they automatically put me on three blood pressure medications. Oh, wow. And I came home and had quite a few side effects to those. And I was like, you know what? This is not what I want. I had a friend because I have been in a wheelchair the last couple of years. I had a friend take me to my regular, my family physician, and we were going through the medications about a year ago, and she gets, oh, my goodness, you take all of that medicine? And I said, yeah. I mean, I know that they had listed off about 16 things. And I thought, you know what? This is getting kind of crazy. And I knew that I had a lot of side effects from the medications. And so I guess after getting other people's reactions to those and realizing how crazy it was to actually be on all of that medication, that I decided I was going to start getting off of them. Okay. So yeah. So you'd already started that, and then you found curable. And checked into it, and it didn't resonate really at first. Yes. And so then once I followed your Instagram and did a lot more research, I thought, okay, you know, maybe this is something for me. And in the course of the last, I would say, 14 months, I have got off of almost 14 medications. Yeah, that is amazing. It blows my mind. Like you guys, Renee's story, it's so incredible, and it just keeps getting more and more incredible. So yeah. Do you want me to tell you some of them? Yeah. Because these are hard hitters, I feel like. Oh my gosh. Oxycodone. Neurontin, I was on 2,400 milligrams of Neurontin a day. Effexor. 100 milligrams of Baclofen a day. Clonopin. Carvetilol. Welbutrin. And then I did Botox for my migraines every three months, as well as a monthly emgality syringe for my migraines. Yeah. And then, you know, a handful of other medications, but some heavy medicines. Those are s

This episode includes a 6 minute technique you can do to deactivate your triggers. My coach who studies hypnotherapy taught me this somatic hack to decrease the intense feelings of a trigger. It is not to ignore the trigger or brush it under a rug, but to make it more emotionally manageable so it can be processed and let go. Think of something that triggers you, and try the process along with me in this episode.  Best if you can sit or lay down with your eyes closed.   If you are a woman over age 35, and you're interested in a supportive coaching community to help accelerate your progress, check out Alignment Academy here: https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/somatic-coaching  

This episode is a clip from an Alignment Academy group coaching call.   Listen in to see how I apply somatic tools in a real life situation to help Carrie feel calmer and even excited about a situation that caused anxiety. If you are interested in a supportive coaching community to help accelerate your progress, check out Alignment Academy here: https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/somatic-coaching Transcript- Automatically Generated: This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 129, Coaching Call. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become unstoppable body and mind. Hello, my loves. Today's podcast is actually taken from a coaching call I did in my group coaching program, Alignment Academy. We have a couple of these group calls per week, and Carrie came on for some coaching about anxiety. I wanted you to have a chance to hear this so you can hear how I use these somatic tools in coaching to help create a different result. And with some of these techniques I use, think for yourself about something that may be causing symptoms or anxiety, and you can apply these same things to yourself. Maybe even if you can listen in a place where you can relax, you can do some of the meditations along with Carrie. My question is, tomorrow, I'm going to be away for a good chunk of the day. And so I'm trying to not drink out and keep myself calm. And I just need a little bit of help with that. Yeah. I'm curious, yeah, if you close your eyes and think of the anxiety that comes up, thinking about tomorrow, anything that gives you anxiety, how strong is that? Like how much intensity is there from 0 to 10? Like an 8. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So a lot of intensity. Where do you feel that mainly? In your body? A little bit in like my throat and then between my eyes behind the bridge of my nose. Oh, interesting. Okay. And is this like the anxiety? Is that what you called it? Or is there another emotion? Yeah, okay. Yeah, it's anxiety, and now that I've been doing this long enough, it's fear. I mean, it's fear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, do you want to try that peripheral vision technique? I have just really liked it, because it just seems to take the intensity out of it, and then we can still process other things, but it's hard to when there's, you know, 8 out of 10, when you're thinking about it. Yeah. We can't really talk ourselves out of anxiety. So, all right. So go ahead and find a spot that you can look at, not on the screen, but maybe on the wall behind you or out the window, and just focus on that one spot, and then start opening up your peripheral vision. So you kind of soften your eyes, let those, all those little eye muscles relax. Start to see kind of those blurs on the side, opening up more and more to the side of you. Keep focusing forward and even imagine that space behind you that you can somehow sense. If you can sense that room around you. How does that go? Yeah, that's, I'd give it a four. Okay, nice, so definitely a shift. Okay, so now I want you to just go back to those same thoughts, close your eyes, think of being gone tomorrow. How long you'll be gone. I just got the pain down my leg. I know that's like stress-related. There's a neural circuit there that, just thinking of that. Okay, that's cool. More evidence. More evidence, yeah, yeah, totally evidence, right? That's one of the fit criteria, pain that gets worse when somebody talks about it, or talks about, he doesn't say this, but something emotionally charged, or yeah, and then that happens. He does say under stress, but yeah. Okay, sorry, I'm gonna hijack for just a second, because there's another one I've been wanting to share with you, and I just remembered it. Oh, great. I finally hit the place in my pain journey where I have gratitude when, like just now, I have gratitude when I feel it, because I'm like, this is like, it's humorous. I laugh about it. And I'm like, thank you for telling me that clearly I'm unsettled right now. So, yes, I never would have thought, yeah, that I'd ever have gratitude for this pain. But right. Yeah, it almost sounds like, you know, especially when you're right in it, and you hear those people and you're like, okay, that just, you know, that's annoying. Or they think, oh my gosh, so you're telling me the whole rest of my life, I'm still gonna have pain. But when you have pain like this, it's like, oh, just a message from the body. You know, I didn't realize there's this like trigger and response there, but let's go ahead and detach that because I'm safe. It's okay. You can turn that off. Wow. I love that so much. That was really good. Okay. That's cool. So now when you close your eyes and think about tomorrow, what comes up? So my initial thought was like, yeah, that's a little bit scary. And then immediately my thought was, it's another chance to practice. That feels different. Okay. Very cool. From zero to 10, how much intensity is there? As you think about tomorrow being gone all day. Don't forget about all those things you need to stress out about. Yeah, okay. If I start to let other things creep in, then it's like six. But it's also, there's excitement too. So I start to, you know, cross a line between fear and anxiety, and also like more into the yellow of pleasant, high energy and excitement and, you know. Yeah, yeah. And how does that excitement feel in the body? How does it feel? How does it feel different than the fear anxiety maybe? Yeah, okay, so the fear anxiety was like inward pressure, and this is like an outward pressure. So it was like an inward vibration, and this excitement is like an outward vibration or energy. Oh, that's cool to know. Yeah. So maybe there's even some metaphor thing you could, you know, a switch you could flip or a knob you could, you know, it's like, oh, I'm in the inward pressure. It's the fear anxiety. How can I turn that into like excitement? Oh, yeah, I am excited about this tomorrow. I am excited about, right, the adventure I'm going to have. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You did something with me once where you had me think about, I don't actually remember what you asked me to do, but what I did was I imagined like a tree, and it was like the roots were in my chest going down, and then the leaves and the branches were in my head reaching out. What was that? Yeah. It was like a tree metaphor of that excitement, anticipation, or fear that's like the leaves shaking in the upper part of the chest, and then going down to the root, or like the trunk, I should say, of the tree, more stability, feeling more grounded, maybe even feeling grounded in support by the chair, and your feet in the chair, that kind of thing. Yeah. But it was like a communication between the two things, like my head and my heart, or my solar plexus, and I forget, I kept notes probably somewhere, but that would take me a while. Yeah. I mean, I know I even have a meditation on my podcast, that's this tree meditation. So I bet the way I remember it is the way I always explain it, and probably with you, we had a special version of it, and that part I don't remember. Yeah, I just found it. Yeah, I liked that, and that really seemed to... And what I'm feeling now was like brain and chest and gut, and it just seems like it would, I don't know, be helpful. Yeah, yeah, maybe even that brain part could be part of the metaphor. It's something in the tree or it's part of the tree, but the sensation in the chest might feel more like that. I think we talked about the... Well, I'm like, how much should I explain it first or should we just do it? But the wind basically in the storms, that actually makes the tree stronger, right? Like then the roots are able to grasp down and grow down, so that it's really strong because of that turbulence, that kind of thing. Okay, I like this even more because that plays into the thought that I had of like, this is a chance to practice. Practicing will make me get better at this. Yeah, exactly. You're just, you're at your growth edge. Yeah, and that's why this is scary. Your brain is like, okay, there could be physical danger or emotional danger. Either way, we're going to send these symptoms, and we want to just be like, brain, you know, this is safe. We got this. This is our growth edge. That's why it feels like this. This means this is our chance to practice. This is our chance to evolve. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So let's have you close your eyes and first feel that anxiety and the fear. And thinking about tomorrow might be even harder to, it's not an eight out of 10 probably anymore, right? No. But you probably remember that anxiety feeling. And now that you've done this work a while, you know that. And let's do have you think of all of these things that might cause anxiety in the future tomorrow. And maybe some of the things we haven't thought about that might be closer to an eight out of 10, just anything that's a fear or anxiety producing topic. And imagine that tree that's blowing in the wind. It's in a storm, and you're watching it, right, and you're watching those leaves shake, and you're watching the branches even sway. And it may even seem a little scary to watch it like you're worried about the tree. But then as you turn down to see the trunk, you see that the trunk isn't even moving. And then when you look down and you know that those roots are down beneath the ground, like the ground's not moving. It's totally stable. So imagine feeling that in your body as you take your attention down towards your belly and pelvis, and I guess that solar plexus. And how does that area feel to you? Warm and confident. Okay, warm, confident. Does it have a different movement, or is it just kind of different than the movement above? It's yeah, it's not, it's really not moving. It's just, like,

In this episode, I interview Tai Kuncio.  She is a fellow moderator in the "Tell Me About Your Pain" Facebook Group. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/695823314550483)   Tai had various pains starting in childhood, which they attributed to being athletic.  But she struggled the most with chronic knee pain. At one point after knee surgery, she was doing physical therapy 4 to 5 hours per day and still not getting better.   It wasn’t her weakness or muscle dysfunction, but her fear that was driving her pain.   Finally when she moved across the world to Africa and gave up the intensity with what she was trying to heal, she embraced the mind-body approach.   She no longer struggles with chronic daily pain, and when symptoms come up she knows how to handle them so they don’t stick around long.   Listen for her inspirational story and what she learned about letting go of the intensity to heal.   You can find Tai at https://www.retrainyourchronicpain.com/ email : retrainyourchronicpain@gmail.com   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com   Here's a free 6 week link to Curable:  http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen    

This week I share an interview with my client, Lucas.   He struggled with several years of anxiety that was getting worse and more debilitating with time.   At times it was even difficult for him to go to the store or to lunch with a friend without worrying, "what if I get an anxiety attack?"   After 3 months of somatic coaching with me, Lucas felt like he had found the missing piece.  He had already tried meditation, breathing, yoga, acupuncture- all the "right" things to decrease the anxiety in his life.   But this approach taught him the tools he needed to actually unlearn the anxiety- so his brain produced it less and less.   Listen for more, and be sure and get on my "Unlearn Your Anxiety and Depression" Book Club list if you want more help in this area for free! https://body-and-mind-lifecoach.myflodesk.com/bookclub   You can check out Lucas' music here: Hannah/Lucas Pop Music - Idylmind  https://linktr.ee/idylmind   Meditation Album- https://lucasfackler.bandcamp.com/album/meditations-vol-1   General info: lucasfackler.com   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com   Here's a free 6 week link to Curable:  http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen Transcript- Automatically Generated: This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 127, Unlearning Anxiety with Lucas. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become Unstoppable Body and Mind. All right, today I have a special guest, and we're going to be talking more about anxiety. As you know, I've been doing that Unlearn Your Anxiety and Depression Book Club by Dr. Howard Schubiner, talking a lot about anxiety, really realizing how much it's actually so prevalent with my clients. But I asked Lucas to come here today because his story is mainly with more the anxiety, not complicated with a lot of other symptoms, although of course, some things come and go. But it's really been cool to see his progress over the last three months, addressing his anxiety somatically, and how that has just changed things so quickly for him. So welcome, Lucas. Thank you for coming. Yeah. You hit the nail on the head there. It's my anxiety drives my anxiety. It's kind of the thing. There's not a lot of tangible things I worry about other than having an anxiety attack. And it took a while to kind of realize that's what's going on. And so here we are. Here we are. Well, let's start at the beginning. And if you could just tell us kind of what brought you to this work. Like, how did anxiety develop for you? And like, where were you when you found this? I think I actually noticed anxiety when I was a kid, but it didn't really dominate my life, you know, but I just remember a couple of times when I was really young. And then in my early 20s, some periods of time that were tough, but it didn't really start to become like a problem affecting my day to day life until like about five years ago after some business stuff went south for me, where, you know, I had a video business and a music business, and I found where they both meet. And it was like making videos for audio brands. And it got like pretty quickly. It was doing really well. But then after a few years, some relationships changed and stuff changed and it fell out on me, which was like financially devastating. And that's really screwed with my confidence and everything, just all the things I was doing and everything I had planned. Didn't really pan out how I thought. And it left me kind of doubting myself often and ruminating on what I could have done. And doubt and ruminating and thinking about those situations turned me into an anxious mess because I was in my head more than I was out in the world. And I thought I was putting time into like fixing my business or being a better business person. But like, oh, if I just like think about it. But I was doing a ton of damage and I did not realize. Until, you know, a couple of times I had some pretty like mental break moments, you know, complete with high heart rate and all that stuff. That I realized I need to take a look at why is this happening? And what are some steps that I can take to kind of undo this or work with this? Yeah. So over the last five years, did anything get better? Did it get worse? Did it stay the same? A little bit. I mean, it used to be chronic pain in my neck and shoulders. So I sought out treatment there. I sought out physical therapy. And one was like a therapist literally just pushing a knot out of my shoulder. Right. And another other physical therapy was doing the work myself, different stretches. Another one was finding a massage therapist doing this method called Hendrickson Method, which is incredible. He helped me get over some kind of lingering pain. And it was also mindset stuff. So that led me down the path of like, okay, like it's not just about stretching and getting massage, but it's about mindset things. And then so I did acupuncture. Yeah. With a really great acupuncturist who also was like more than just stick me with the needles, mindset things and always had good advice. Yeah. And then yoga. So all the right stuff, taking the right path, and then even daily walks. I haven't missed a walk for four or five years, every day, even when I had COVID. So I thought I have this under control. Look at all the things I'm doing over five, six years. That's a lot of work. But what I didn't realize I wasn't doing was confronting the anxiety itself. I thought if I did the work, the anxiety would go away. But it wasn't until my first sessions with you after I had kind of a really tough December, the beginning or end of the year, we got together and did some sessions. And you taught me how to confront it and breathe through those feelings. And in talking to you, it was pretty easy to bring back that adrenaline and cortisol rush and that tension that I get. And then we get into the comfortable state and do the somatic work to acknowledge it's there. And kind of diminish how much it can dominate your body. Yeah. That's the biggest one. So, yeah, I remember one of our first sessions, you saying something like, I just want to not feel that at all, right? Like, I just want to be able to go out because you were at the point where even going out to the store was stressful and getting at times, yeah, it would get me secluded. And so, that idea of like, hey, if I do the work right, then I won't have a symptom. And that trips people up in their healing if they're thinking that when they have a symptom, it means they're doing it wrong because like, you could still have a symptom. I could still have symptoms. I still do have symptoms. Yes. Because our body is giving us feedback. So when we interpret it as we're doing it wrong and I need to never have anxiety, that actually perpetuates more anxiety. Yeah. So the other day I was taking a walk thinking about doing this podcast and thinking like, everything I just said, how I identified it and I had all these things I was doing right to like work on my anxiety, but what was I not doing? And what did that keep me from? And so I wrote down five things. I wrote down one was identify, which I did to just elaborate just a little bit. Oh, sorry. So one was identify there's an issue and identify that you have anxiety. Yeah. So I did that. Did you identify that pretty early on, by the way, like when you first like five years ago, or was that more when it started impacting your life in different ways? I think it was after I got through the pain management. Yeah. It's when I identified that the anxiety may have been responsible for the pain management. And then rewind years earlier, I would have like stomach issues from time to time. I started to go, oh, there's always some lingering thing with me that is never diagnosed as some medical issue. Then I was like, damn, that's anxiety. So once I identified it, my step two was to be proactive, which was seek treatments physically and then mentally yoga and walking and all that stuff. The third step is the one that I kept skipping and that was confront it. Instead of run from anxiety, it wasn't until with you, I confronted it that I could then my fourth step was accept it. I'm going to have anxiety. It will never go away. And once I accepted it, now I can start to keep working on it. But then healing comes with after I accept it. Those are my five steps that I realized I was doing one and two, one and two, one and two, one and two, skipping three, I could not get to four or five. So, yeah, in doing three with you, I have now accepted it. I now have regular scheduled therapy as well. I'm ready to, you know, it's going to be my life, but I'm ready to move forward from having it dominate my life at times. Yeah, right, right. It's like that, that classic case of like, when you have that, that thing that you're avoiding, it's like pushing a beach ball under water. And you're just, there's so much resistance and there's so much, it takes so much energy and it's so draining, and then it just rebounds up anyway, right? And so that idea of the more we want to get rid of something, whether it's chronic pain, and we go that route of like trying all the medicines and trying all the doctors and procedures and all these things and still having chronic pain, or what happens, I had forgotten about the neck pain because we didn't, like I didn't deal with that symptom. But that makes sense, actually, I see a lot of people whose chronic pain symptoms decrease and then anxiety comes up. You know, it's like they kind of, it's like a whack-a-mole. It's just like, yeah, yeah, totally goes down. Another one co

In this episode, I interview 3 women with amazing healing stories.  We all met as Moderators for the "Tell Me About Your Pain" Facebook group created by Alan Gordon.   Kristina has a list of symptoms that were healed with the mind-body approach.  Including anxiety, eating disorders, depression, hypothyoroidism, adrenal fatigue, POTS, leaky gut, histamine intolerance, insomnia, adrenal insufficiency, and hashimotos. Stacey suffered for 18 years with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, IBS, Lyme disease, insomnia, body pains, and pelvic pain.   Callie had anxiety, insomnia, fainting, and neck pain, which she found out was a congenital neck fusion with “creative wiring in her neck”.  She was told if she moved her neck wrong and she could be paralyzed, so she had medical trauma and increased fear.  Her pain spread through the left side of her body and she began to have joint instability (ankle sprains, knee dislocation, hip popping).  She was diagnosed with myofascial pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, migraines, chronic fatigue, unexplained rashes, acne, and had pelvic pain with sitting. Listen for more about their healing journeys- what they found most helpful and advice they would give others when doing this work.  You can find more about Kristina and Stacey's group coaching here: www.christianbrainrewire.com And Kristina's email is www.kristinacarlton.com Stacey has a free "Stretch and Breathe Nervous System Regulation Class" https://www.wholisticallyrenewed.com/fitness And Callie's contact info is coachcalliek@gmail.com or on her facebook page https://www.facebook.com/people/Brain-First-Chronic-Pain-Coaching/61555738854975/?mibextid=LQQJ4d   Here's a free 6 week link to Curable:  http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com

This Episode is what Dr Schubiner calls "The Six F's" in his book "Unlearn Your Pain"   These are natural reactions to pain, but they also cause the brain to amplify the pain or symptoms.   Here are the 6 F's, listen for more info:   "Fear of the pain or other symptom: We fear the sensation of it as it can be so severe and unpleasant; we worry about whether it will go away and when or when it will return; we spend a lot of time wishing it will go away   Focus on the pain or other symptom: We pay a lot of attention to it; we monitor it; we focus on how it feels and if it is changing or getting worse   Frustration with it: We get upset, annoyed and angry at the pain or other symptom; we become resentful that doctors haven’t fixed it or don’t understand it; we become sad for what we have lost   Fighting it: We work hard to overcome it; we try to push through it; and we get exhausted in the fight, especially when we feel we are losing the battle   Trying to figure it out: We spend a lot of time thinking about it; we search for answers online, in doctor’s offices and with alternative care practices   Trying to fix it: We spend a lot of time and money on treatments that haven’t worked; we try anything and everything that might work; we get desperate for a cure; we get depressed when one doesn’t materialize."   The way you react to pain can cause your brain to produce more of it or decrease it, so reacting differently on purpose will help you feel better.     For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com Transcript- Automatically Generated: This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 125, The Six Fs, Reactions That Increase Pain. In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become unstoppable body and mind. Hello, my loves. You may know that I did a book club for Dr. Schubiner's book, Unlearn Your Pain. All of the videos for the replays are actually on YouTube. You can go to my YouTube channel, Body and Mind Life Coach. And I really love doing these book clubs because I learn so much and I get to really study this information so I can present it to you guys. And Dr. Schubiner's Unlearn Your Pain is chock full of good information. He's been a researcher in this field for so long and has a great way of distilling down the concepts into simpler ways to understand what's going on with pain and especially with chronic pain and chronic symptoms. As you probably know by now, in most cases, chronic pain and disease doesn't actually show you that there is something structural going on or how much tissue damage there is. When you have chronic symptoms, it's often the case that you have neuroplastic pain. Your brain can produce pain even when there's no injury or long after an injury has healed, which is usually three to six months at the most. So one of the concepts that's really important to learn when doing this work is that the way that you respond to the pain actually makes a difference on whether the brain keeps producing the pain or not. Basically, it's like a volume knob. When you react in certain ways, the brain turns up the volume or amplifies your symptoms. The six Fs are normal reactions to pain. So if you have these reactions, don't beat yourself up. They're very normal. It's understandable. But you also want to know what these six Fs are and recognize them in yourself because you could be inadvertently causing your pain to become higher and higher. And there are more effective ways of handling your pain, reacting to pain that actually retrain the brain and rewire the brain to produce pain less and less. So pain is not just about what kind of damage there is going on in our body, but it really has a lot more to do with the ways that we're reacting to the pain. So I'm going to go through the six Fs that Dr. Schubiner lists as these natural reactions that increase your pain or other symptoms. The first one and the biggest one is fear. Any type of fear-based response means you're in a survival state. You've activated the nervous system. And when the nervous system is dysregulated, any kinds of symptoms can happen in the body, ranging from numbness to muscle soreness, to fatigue, brain fog, dizziness, tinnitus. Basically, the brain uses these neural circuits when there is danger, and the brain can activate these neural circuits even when there is no structural danger, but the nervous system is dysregulated. It's basically misinformation from the brain. When you have pain and react with fear, it activates the pain-fear-pain cycle, which I talk about in episode 69. So fear of the pain is normal. It's unpleasant, it doesn't feel good, and we start to worry that something more may be going on. We may think about when it's gonna go away or when it might return. There are many people that don't even enjoy the time that they have without symptoms because they are fearing when the symptoms may come back. And of course, being in that fear-based state, it's more likely that your symptoms will come back. So notice if you're responding with a lot of fear because this will increase your pain. F number two is focusing on the pain. This is something our brains naturally do. We might focus, pay attention to it, try to find patterns, think about it a lot, notice if it's getting worse. Our brain loves to create stories to explain things and to understand them. And so our brain may be on the lookout for pain or any other kind of symptoms as a way of trying to understand what's going on. But this focusing on it can actually increase our symptoms. Many times I've heard of people Googling their symptoms, reading all about them, maybe even keeping a pain diary, and they've actually shown in research that people who do keep a pain diary and keep track of when their pain is worse, they actually do have pain that lasts longer than people who are not as focused on it and aren't tracking it. F number three is frustration. This is so common, especially I see this with people who like to be good, like to do well at things. I work with a lot of physicians, and so a lot of them have been used to being able to solve problems and understand things. And a lot of people can have an understanding of what's going on. And then when they have pain, get really frustrated. They might make it mean that they're not doing a good job or this won't work for them. They may be annoyed or angry or upset at the pain that it's back. They could be frustrated that the doctors haven't fixed it or the doctors don't understand what's going on. They may be frustrated about things they're not able to do anymore or things that they've lost by having the pain. So again, this is such a normal reaction to have, but it also causes the brain to produce more symptoms. If you're frustrated with your pain, try and be so compassionate with yourself. F number four is fighting it. Some of the personality traits of chronic pain include being a perfectionist, working hard, a strong sense of duty. And in our society, we're really taught that the harder we work at something, the better our results will be. So sometimes people fight the pain. They want to overcome it or push through it. And when we're in this urgent perfectionistic state, that's the nervous system state of flight. And when we're in flight, we could do all of the right techniques to heal, but because we're still in this dysregulated state, our brain keeps producing the symptoms. For many people, it's more a matter of slowing down and doing less, rather than trying to fight hard and do more and work through it. When we're fighting the symptom, it's like telling your brain, this is important, this is dangerous. We've got to be on high alert about this. So it's understandable that our symptoms could increase. F number five is trying to fix it. This obsession with figuring something out and fixing it is also part of the flight nervous system state. It's this activation, you can't rest, you need to keep reading things, listening to things. The problem when you're in this nervous system state is that even when people do give you the right information, you might doubt it, you might not believe it. I've talked to several people who have actually done a consult with Dr. Sarno or Dr. Schubiner or Dr. Strax and gotten information that, yes, your pain is neuroplastic, and yet they keep trying to figure it out. And basically this nervous system state is like if you could just get the right information and really believe it, then you'll feel better. And so they're constantly searching for this information and keeping themselves in this high activated state. Oftentimes, I hear people say, if I could just figure out what it was from my childhood or if I could just learn the right technique, then I'll be able to figure it out. But constantly seeking for more information and trying to figure it out and trying to overanalyze everything that's going on, it's like running on a hamster wheel. You're not getting anywhere, and eventually you're gonna get tired. You're burning yourself out. Again, this is a case where sometimes people need to take a break from all of the figuring out that they're doing. And instead of listening to more podcasts and doing more reading and getting on forums and discussing it, it might be better to just read some other kind of book, read a fiction novel or a romance book. It's pretty counterintuitive, but if you notice you're in that state of trying to figure it out, that could be what is keeping your pain around. And the last F is trying to fix it. You might have been looking all over for a solution, trying all kinds of

In this episode I put together the 10 biggest myths I've seen around pain (especially chronic pain).   Lots of new pain research is coming out, so if you think you know about pain (like I did as a Physical Therapist), there may be some new findings that surprise you.   Here are the 10 biggest myths about pain, and be sure to listen for more explanation on each of them:   1-pain equals tissue damage 2-If I have pain or symptoms after exercise or food, it means that exercise or food is what caused my pain. 3-The longer I’ve had pain means the longer it will take to heal 4-I will have to re-live traumatic experiences in order to heal from them 5-If I don’t have significant childhood trauma then I shouldn’t have chronic pain 6-If my pain is mind body, I have to have 100% belief before I can heal 7-I need to be perfect at healing 8-If I have neuroplastic pain it means that I’m weak 9-If I have been doing the work and still have pain it means there are repressed emotions I haven’t yet found 10- The goal is to be totally regulated and pain free   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com    

Anxiety is a symptom that goes hand in hand with chronic pain and disease. In this episode I talk about what anxiety is, how it affects the body, why it's so common, and how to unlearn it! I give an example from my own life, and some techniques you can use to teach your brain to produce anxiety less and less. If you are looking to support your growth in a loving, fun and nurturing community, check out Alignment Oasis and the specials I have going on now: https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/alignment-oasis   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com Transcript-Automatically Generated: This is Betsy Jensen, and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 123, Unlearning Anxiety. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become unstoppable body and mind. Hello, my loves. I really wanted to talk about anxiety today because it is a very common symptom for people who have chronic pain or disease. In fact, it's kind of like the chicken or the egg, which came first. Many people who have a tendency towards more anxious thoughts, they're more likely to develop this neuroplastic chronic pain. Alan Gordon said in his book The Way Out that the fear of his symptoms becoming chronic is actually what caused his symptoms to become chronic. And once you have pain or symptoms that don't go away quickly, it's common to develop a health anxiety about symptoms in your body. So I think of anxiety as just another version of one of the neuroplastic symptoms your brain can produce. So first, just a definition of anxiety. It's intense, excessive and persistent worry, and fear about everyday situations. So anxiety could be normal if you have a stressful situation, like public speaking, but it becomes a problem when anxiety feelings become excessive or interfere with your daily life. You might identify with some of these symptoms of productivity anxiety. This is what I really associated with before. So feeling like you're not doing enough, feeling guilty or ashamed when you take breaks or rest, feeling like you're always behind and you can never catch up, obsessively planning, checking emails, messages or to-do lists, feeling irritable or easily frustrated if things don't go according to plan, or feeling so overwhelmed that you procrastinate and avoid tasks. And you could feel on the edge, irritated, and like your mind is always racing. This can affect your sleep, and you could even have night anxiety where you can't stop worrying about the next day. You have intrusive thoughts that come up at night and a racing mind. You replay the day and keep thinking about what happened. You're tossing and turning in bed, and you're worried about not getting enough sleep, which causes you to get less sleep. And even though you're feeling physically exhausted, you can't sleep. With anxiety, you could have memory issues and trouble focusing. You notice that you worry a lot and overthink. You have a lack of patience and need constant reassurance, and you could even have panic attacks. Anxiety is this activated state of the nervous system. So it's like fight or flight. It's more in the flight. Like you're running from a tiger. You're running to try to constantly find problems and fix them and solve them so that you'll feel safe. And this can be depleting to your body if you're in this flight state of anxiety for too long. It takes its toll on your body. You could have a racing heart, shortness of breath, tightness in your chest, numbness, dizziness, or spinning vision, headaches, muscle tension and body aches, shaking, excessive sweating even when you're cold. You could feel a lump in your throat, again, because of this muscle tension, preparing you to run for a tiger, but there's no tiger chasing you. And during fight or flight, your digestive system turns off because digestion isn't as important as finding safety. So this can lead to stomach issues and stomach pain. For people who have health anxiety or a lot of focus on the symptoms of their body, they may feel these symptoms of anxiety and focus on them and how uncomfortable they are and worry what is wrong, which actually leads the brain to produce more anxiety because this danger signal is heightened. Eventually, you might start to avoid activities that might cause you anxiety, and so you're getting less interaction going out and pleasure in your life, which also tends to produce more pain and anxiety. A study from Pennsylvania State University even found that negative moods and anxiety affect your immune system and the production of inflammation. When we're used to living in this anxious, high alert state, it actually might feel uncomfortable to start feeling good. So we might have anxiety when things go well. If you could imagine sleeping in the jungle, you kind of want to be on high alert. You don't want to let your guard down. You want to see what possibly could happen. You don't want to relax and let go. It's like waiting for the other shoe to drop, this high alert, constant anxiety state. Renee Brown talks about this as rehearsing tragedy. So even though there may not be something to necessarily worry about, we start feeling good and safe, and that actually promotes more feelings of anxiety and fear. Dr. Joe Dispenza says, You can eat all the right foods and do all the right things. But if you're living in anxiety and fear, you're viewing the world from the worst case scenario because that's what you do in survival. And there's no energy for growth and repair. The living in chronic anxiety is living in these survival states, and it causes these physical effects in the body, and you're not getting to that calm, rest and repair state. And if you do, that could even be a source of anxiety because you're not used to feeling that good feeling without worrying and fear. But the good news about all of this is that that habit of the brain of going into anxious thoughts is just like these neuroplastic habits of chronic pain. And it can be unlearned, it can be treated the same way, and we can actually rewire our brain to produce less and less anxiety. The first way to do this is to realize that anxiety is false information. It's a false danger signal. It's a misinterpretation of the brain of thinking something safe is actually dangerous. So we want to see it just like other forms of neuroplastic symptoms that when we are getting this very real symptom in our body, these feelings in our body, that it's not an actual threat, it's just this habit of the brain of finding danger where there isn't really any. This can be hard though, because again, there's these physical symptoms. You're producing adrenaline and cortisol to activate you, to get you motivated to do something, to solve something, to fix something, to run away from that tiger, to feel safe. So the feelings of anxiety are really prompting you to do something and take action at a physiological level. So we need to actually respond to them differently in order to train the brain to produce them less. Just like when we have a pain signal, we want to respond with more calmness, with messages of safety. And when we react differently to it, the brain doesn't continue amplifying that anxiety response. One way to think about anxiety is that our brain really dislikes the unknown. Having something that we don't know what's going to happen is distressing to our brain. Anxiety prompts us to do something to solve that unknown, to eliminate that feeling of the unknown. But what we want to do is actually start to tolerate that feeling of the unknown and not react to it. And as we know with neuroplasticity, when we have a different response, it trains our brain to produce that anxiety less and less. So things like mindfulness to the present situation and positive feelings like gratitude can actually help rewire those pathways of anxiety. So I think of resolving anxiety or any of these other physical symptoms in two main ways. There's the top down and the bottom up approach. So the top down is changing your thinking. And sometimes you're able to reframe things. You're able to remind yourself, oh, I don't need to worry about this. You're able to know, oh, this is just the unknown that my brain doesn't like, and that's all that I'm feeling. But other times, trying to rationalize, trying to send messages of safety cognitively through your brain and your thoughts is not quite cutting it. And your body still has this response, and then that affects actually what you believe and think. So there's the bottom up approaches, which are more somatic, meaning using your body. So I want to give you an example of what happened with me last week. That's actually why I thought about recording this podcast, and I recorded it last week, but it didn't work, had to re-record it. And so here's an example of what happened. I was sleeping and woke up in the morning, actually about 3 a.m. with anxiety, and I could feel just this uncomfortable feeling in my body and heart racing, and I started thinking about what was going on. And for me, the unknown was, I had a week coming up where my sister was out of town and my family was in charge of helping my dad, and there were some things that I still wanted to get done that week, and I was worried about schedules and how we'd work it all out and how I'd make it work. So my brain was in this state of, there's something new going on this week that's out of the ordinary, out of the routine, something we haven't dealt with exactly before. How are we gonna figure out? How are we gonna solve it? And there was this like racing mind and then just a lot of body sympt

Pain when things are good is a phenomenon I see when people are unlearning pain and learning to regulate their nervous systems.   When you're used to being in high alert, then letting your guard down and feeling safe can actually seem dangerous.   We can expand our ability to stay in the "rest and repair state" longer, but some people have learned resting is "lazy" or having fun is "selfish".   Watch for this in yourself- if your symptoms come in a time of more calm or peace, don't worry!     This is actually a sign your nervous system is EXPANDING.    The rest and repair state can become more normal for you than survival mode, but the nervous system has to go through growth to get there.   If you are looking to support your growth in a loving, fun and nurturing community, check out Alignment Oasis and the specials I have going on now: https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/alignment-oasis   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com   Transcript- Automatically Generated: This is Betsy Jensen and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind, Episode 122, Pain When Things Are Good. In this podcast, we learn to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to heal and to create the results we want in our life. Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life. Become unstoppable body and mind. Hello, my loves. I wanted to record this episode because this is a phenomenon that I see a lot. As people are healing, making new neural pathways, rewiring, regulating their nervous system, it can actually feel unsafe in a way to just let your guard down and feel good. So if you think about the nervous system states, the rest and repair state, the parasympathetic calm state, that state is when you trust and feel okay about things, and things are going to work out, and you're not on high alert. But if you're used to being on high alert, being in the calm state can feel dangerous. And that's what I want to talk about. I actually experienced that over Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was actually my birthday this year. And so it was a really, really fun weekend, basically. The Wednesday, the night before, I had my birthday dance. Actually, during the day, some friends helped me get this couch that I really wanted, and they moved it into my house, and it's in awesome condition, and it's so soft, and I just felt so grateful. I got spoiled all day Wednesday. And then Thursday was Thanksgiving, my actual birthday, and we had a great get together with my family, and some really good times, and people were celebrating me there. And then that night, I started getting some anxious thoughts, some familiar stomach symptoms, discomfort. And it would be easy to say like, oh, I just had Thanksgiving dinner, that's why my stomach is upset. But what really tipped me off were the kind of thoughts that I was having. I started kind of having these ruminating thoughts. I was actually thinking of that couch that I had gotten the day before. And there was another one on the Facebook Marketplace that I thought might have been slightly better. So I was regretting my decision about that couch. I had recently helped purchase a car for my daughter, like a used car, and then it had mechanical problems right off the bat within the first week. And so I was, you know, questioning my judgment. And the biggest tip off though for me was I was having these thoughts like, what if mind-body stuff isn't true? What if what I'm teaching, you know, doesn't actually work and doesn't help people? And that's when I was like, okay, brain, what's going on? I think what had happened was I'd seen someone in my family like rubbing their shoulder and talking about getting an injection. And it was from across the room. I wasn't part of the conversation. But, you know, as a physical therapist before this, a lot of times they would ask me about my opinion. And I just, I think everything basically was going so well in my life, feeling really loved, appreciated, adored, taken care of. And I started just worrying about things that didn't even really make sense. So even though, you know, I've had so much success myself in my life, it's changed my life, to have this mind-body perspective and to understand things and change things in my life so I could feel better. And I know it's happened for so many of my clients and, you know, hundreds and thousands of other people that also use these methods that other people have worked with. Like, of course, this mind-body stuff works. And so I think my high alert system was just looking for something to worry about. Kind of like I haven't been worrying about something for a while, and it doesn't really feel safe to just feel this good for this long without starting to worry about things. Can you guys relate? Does this sound familiar? Part of the reason this happens is this is just how the nervous system changes. Over time, there's an expand and then contract. So when I was feeling good for a few days, it was like an expansion, and then the nervous system kicks in. Hey, are we still safe? Let's worry about this. And then I can expand and contract. So you don't always have to be improving. In fact, this is just the sign that your nervous system is growing. The rewiring is working. Subconsciously, my nervous system is still always going to be scanning possible dangers. So for me, when I was having those GI symptoms, I quickly related it to the kinds of thoughts and worries that were coming up. I could really see that there were some thoughts that were out of the ordinary for me to think. And I also did take a peppermint pill because generally that does help soothe my stomach and indigestion and gassiness and all that. So for you guys who are wondering, when you do have actual physical symptoms caused by your brain and nervous system, you can choose how to react, but your brain doesn't have to do all the work. I think as long as you're acknowledging, yes, I can see that this has a mind-body component. Oh, I'm stressed in this way. This makes sense. Then you can still use things that feel appropriate to help with some physical soothing. So you might take a bath or use a heating pad or take some medicine. Those things are okay. And you can still rewire your brain to realize this is a stress response. And when I just soothe myself or mind myself, it's okay. And work on stretching out those times and feeling better more and more of the time and trusting that it's okay to feel in this calm, safe state more and more of the time. Your nervous system will expand. The rest and repair state can become more of your normal state, and you'll have less body symptoms and pain. Here are some of my clients in Alignment Academy talking about just this. I feel like my basal stress level is lower than it has been in five years since all the things started. And so that's huge. I feel like I've been just winning all over the place lately with regards to my pain and my body and all of that. I just keep like cluing in to when I'm not having pain, which is more often than not the case, I'm starting to really try to think like, am I feeling safe? You know, really trying to clue into that feeling of safety. And I just I keep noticing it over and over again. So maybe that's part of the reason or the reason why my pain has just been so much less. I have something amazing that happened. I had a high school reunion event. I have all these diet restrictions and trouble eating things. And I went there and had so much fun and was able to eat all the stuff. I didn't have pain. Like normally the thing that I always fear is like the heartburn, the pain, like, you know, severe pain in my stomach. And I didn't have like any of that. Amazing. If you are looking for a community of support for similar people focused on wellness, please look into Alignment Academy. And actually, depending on when you listen to this, at the first of next year, Alignment Academy is getting a makeover. My new program will have all the same content, but it's called Alignment Oasis, an online wellness retreat for body and mind. Instead of having a feel like learning an academy and more work, I know that everyone already has a lot of work. It might not sound relaxing to come to a program and have a lot of homework and things to do, but for Alignment Oasis, we'll have just the same material to cover with an emphasis on fun. So instead of a workbook, there'll be a playbook. It'll have games and activities and a lot of guidance. If you are not sure where you are on this journey, what activities to start with and where to start, that's best for you. Maybe you've tried it on your own, and you see how having some support and community could help. Or maybe you've tried other groups and didn't get the results you wanted. Chances are you've tried a lot of things to help with your healing, and I understand it can be frustrating to think of another option. And what if it doesn't work? In Alignment Oasis, I'll help you feel more relaxed when you come to coaching calls. You'll learn so many tools and ideas for soothing your nervous system and calming. It'll be like going to a beach resort that you can access from your own home. When learning is combined with play, the brain learns so much quicker. In fact, scientists have discovered it takes about 400 repetitions to create new synapses in the brain, unless it's done in play, in which case it only takes 10 to 20 repetitions. When you're unlearning pain and learning to regulate your nervous system, play helps by not just telling your nervous system that you're safe, but actually showing it. So check out the link in my show notes. I have some special introductory pricing going on for Alignment Oasis. Hope to see you there. Thanks guys. Have a good week

Anxiety may be a familiar state for you - whether you have chronic pain or not.   Anxiety is the nervous system state of "Flight".  We are often not running from a tiger, but we are running to do more, scan for danger, and fix problems.   Anxiety is uncomfortable in the body, and prompts action- doing or thinking constantly to feel better.   The solution to unlearning anxiety and teaching the brain not to go into anxious habits is to go INTO the sensation instead of trying to avoid it.   This tree meditation will help you explore the sensations of anxiety neutrally, so you can help them pass and train your brain to produce them less.   For a limited time, book a 55 min Clarity Session with me for just $39. Bring a struggle in your life (chronic pain, relationships, business, emotions, health), and leave with understanding to improve it. New clients only, one per person https://calendly.com/thebetsyjensen/39-clarity-session   For weekly calls and community support integrating this work into your life, check out Alignment Academy: https://www.bodyandmindlifecoach.com/alignment-academy-membership   Please subscribe and share this podcast with someone who might love it!   For fresh content on healing chronic pain or disease, follow Betsy on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bodyandmindlifecoach/   Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvXZSYYGL2cfJl-oEOzqspA   Website https://bodyandmindlifecoach.com   *Free Nervous System Modules- 4 free videos explaining the nervous system, how it affects your health, and how to regulate it  https://view.flodesk.com/pages/620ffa96e0eda1a0d870b5a6   *Curable App- 6 Weeks Free with this code http://www.curable.com/betsyjensen If you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and review on Itunes  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unstoppable-body-and-minds-podcast/id1493360543