Latest / Why You Got Sick: How Emotion Drives Chronic Illness & Healing in Women / #18. Your Brain Body Connection Doesn't Work How You Think — Your Chronic Illness Is Proof of What You're Missing (MINI)
Transcript
- 0:00[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody tells women with chronic illness this.
- 0:03[SPEAKER_00]: Your brain is not trying to heal you.
- 0:05[SPEAKER_00]: It is trying to maintain whatever it has decided is normal, and right now normal is sick.
- 0:11[SPEAKER_00]: This is a while you got sick, mini, short, focused, and practical.
- 0:15[SPEAKER_00]: These episode share mind-body education and are designed to complement not replace your medical care.
- 0:21[SPEAKER_00]: Most women understand the brain-body connection as the brain controlling the body.
- 0:26[SPEAKER_00]: The brain sends a signal, the body responds.
- 0:29[SPEAKER_00]: But actually, your brain learns what normal feels like from your body, not the other way around.
- 0:36[SPEAKER_00]: If your body has been tense, exhausted, in pain and depleted for months or years, your brain has been paying attention to that.
- 0:45[SPEAKER_00]: And at a certain point, it stops trying to fix it and it just accepts it.
- 0:50[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of says, okay, this is what this body feels like.
- 0:53[SPEAKER_00]: This is normal for her.
- 0:55[SPEAKER_00]: And then it keeps generating symptoms to match that normal.
- 0:59[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the reasons chronic illness is so hard to shift with physical treatment alone.
- 1:05[SPEAKER_00]: Because the brain has already decided what your body's baseline is.
- 1:09[SPEAKER_00]: And it takes more than a supplement or a diet change to update that decision.
- 1:14[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the science behind why.
- 1:16[SPEAKER_00]: The vagus nerve is the main communication highway between your body and your brain.
- 1:22[SPEAKER_00]: Researchers estimate that around 80 percent of the signals traveling along it go upward from the body to the brain.
- 1:31[SPEAKER_00]: Your body is constantly reporting to your brain about the state it is in and your brain is constantly learning from those reports.
- 1:39[SPEAKER_00]: Which means, if you want to change what your brain thinks normal feels like, you have to change what your body is reporting.
- 1:47[SPEAKER_00]: The fastest and easiest way to do this is through your breath.
- 1:52[SPEAKER_00]: Two short inhales through the nose, followed by one long exhale through the mouth.
- 1:59[SPEAKER_00]: Three times.
- 2:00[SPEAKER_00]: This is called a physiological sigh.
- 2:02[SPEAKER_00]: It is one of the most well-researched breathing techniques in neuroscience.
- 2:07[SPEAKER_00]: And it shifts the body out of an activated state faster than any other breathing pattern.
- 2:13[SPEAKER_00]: When you do this consistently, say three times a day at the same time every day, you are sending your brain repeated evidence that your body's normal is changing, that it's settling, that it is safe.
- 2:26[SPEAKER_00]: Over time, the brain updates too much that baseline.
- 2:30[SPEAKER_00]: This is how you begin to change what your brain thinks normal feels like.
- 2:34[SPEAKER_00]: The breath is one way in, but the emotional patterns your body has been caring for years go deeper than any breathing practice can reach alone.
- 2:44[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to understand what is driving your symptoms at that level, go to the show notes and use my free chat GPT prompt.
- 2:51[SPEAKER_00]: It connects your physical symptoms to the emotional patterns underneath them in 30 seconds.
- 2:57[SPEAKER_00]: It is free the link is in the show notes.
- 2:59[SPEAKER_00]: I'll see you in the next episode.