Neuroplasticity and Brain Retraining for Chronic Conditions

Introduction and Personal Recovery Story 0:00

Our next guest, I can honestly say changed my life and this is back in 2015. I was traveling all over the world and I got a virus. And normally when I get a virus because, you know, you get them occasionally throughout your life, you you recover in about a couple of days or maybe a week. And so I got this virus and I it was a little sinus infection. And I figured, you know, I'll get better, I'll get better. And had the positive attitude was eating right, cleansing, doing all that stuff. I didn't get better.

And so a week later I'm thinking, what's going on? So I went to see my doctor. And my doctor usually doesn't prescribe lots of medications. He's, kind of a holistic doctor, but he was concerned because I had another trip, so he gave me an antibiotic, and he didn't know it was a virus. I didn't know it was a virus. He thought it might be a bacterial infection. And so I took the antibiotic. Didn't get better. So I'm a I'm a little more concerned. And I come back from this trip where I spoke and he says, well, we better do a second course.

So he gives me another antibiotic, which for a virus is not a good thing to do because actually it weakens your immune system and it doesn't really help with the virus. So now I'm not feeling good and I don't know what the heck is going on. I'm like a month into this and I'm achy. My glands are swollen. I'm really wondering, am I going to die? Do I have some incurable illness? And so what I did was what a lot of probably you, many of you listening have done when you run into this situation. I started looking for other doctors taking blood tests, doing all these things, and it helped a little bit.

But I really wasn't getting better and so I didn't know what to do. And then I got this fatigue, this chronic fatigue where I would sleep literally nine, ten hours and wake up super tired. My business. Fortunately, the people that that work with me were able to do a lot of the engagements, but I stopped traveling and my life was really scary and I felt like I had exhausted all the different means to getting better. But fortunately, my my my mind kicked in and I reminded myself, hey, look for people who have overcome this.

And so I got on the internet and not looking at symptoms and all that kind of stuff. But I look for who somebody that had what I had that's gotten better. And it led me to our next guest, who is Ashok Gupta, and I was so grateful to you, Ashok, because your work really turned me around and made me realize that I could heal from this, this chronic fatigue that lots of people say you just have forever. You just have to learn to live with it. And you were that shining light for me. So I really appreciate it.

And part of what made you, more legitimate in my eyes was you weren't just talking theory. You went through this when you were a student at Cambridge. You got chronic fatigue. And and we'll talk about your journey in just a minute. And, and just I mean, it blows my mind that that you even figured out your Gupta method, that helped me and has helped so many thousands of other people all over the planet. You've been a big time speaker. You're putting up, all sorts of great content, and the Gupta method is just incredible.

So I'm so happy to have you with us. Welcome to the Global Energy Healing Summit. Thank you. Tom, thank you for that wonderful introduction. And it's great to be here with you. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah. So tell us about your journey. You're a young man. You're in university. You come down with, with this, this fatigue symptoms. And you figured it out, though. How did you do that? How were you able to tell us about your journey and how were you able to figure it out? Of course. Yeah. So, as you mentioned, I was studying at university.

I was an undergrad. I had my entire life in front of me, and I went on holiday to India and picked up some kind of stomach bug, Delhi belly, as they call it here in the UK. I don't know if you call it that in the US. And I came back and I had some kind of stomach infection and went back to university. So I'll recover just like your, your own story, but it just got worse and worse and worse until I hit a brick wall. Like I just couldn't get out of bed. And often I was housebound. Sometimes I was bedbound thinking, you know, this is it.

My life's over. You know what? What am I going to do? And I go from doctor to doctor and they say, oh, you've got this thing called Emmy or chronic fatigue syndrome. There's no cure. We don't understand what causes it. And people have it for decades. Imagine being told that in your early 20s and thinking crazy, what is going on. And, you know, in that moment, I don't know if it was some kind of universal, inspiration or something. I said to myself, you know, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get over this illness.

Ashok Gupta's Chronic Fatigue Journey 5:20

And if I get better, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others with this condition, because there are millions around the world to have this. And so, you know, this is were the days when the internet was very, rudimentary, you know, the kind of mid, mid to late 90s. And, so I, researched medical journals. I read books on this subject. I studied brain neurology, and I figured out a process, a mechanism that's probably going on in the brain, in the body, and I experimented on my own brain.

Now, let's be very clear. I don't believe these illnesses are in the mind, but I do believe were in the brain, and treating those as two separate things. And ad hoc. I managed to retrain my brain through this hypothesis, got myself 100% better, and then wrote, a medical paper in 1999, which was then published in a medical journal, Medical Hypotheses in 2002. Yeah. And then I thought, right, I really want to help others with this is what this is what my life purpose truly is. And so I set up a clinic, to treat other people with the condition.

And this was basically using neuroplasticity, brain retraining techniques applicable to so many different illnesses, not just chronic fatigue, but fibromyalgia and many other illnesses. We'll we'll talk about. Yeah. And in 2007 I published my treatment protocol online. So we were the first neuroplasticity program to have, kind of programs as it were. Awesome. So yes, that was my that was my journey. Yeah. No, it's amazing because they're like like you like I did. You were going the traditional route at first, going to doctors and I was going to alternative medicine doctors, you know, people that I said, I'm not going to go to, you know, the most traditional route.

I'm going to get doctors. At the end of the day, you were the one that convinced me, though the person that had to get me better was me. And and that was so huge and so empowering. And that's what I've always believed my whole life. I believed that I could do that. And then this thing hit me and it hit me like nothing else that hit me in my life. And that's what a lot of people are going through, right now. What's the number one realization? People that are suffering from chronic fatigue or in Europe is called me or a lot of the world's is called me fiber.

My fibromyalgia, and also, things like food sensitivities, you help them treat food sensitive or chemical sensitivities or electrical sensitivities. What's the number one realization that people need to make to even start getting on the path of healing? For me, it's really understanding that the core of this is in the unconscious brain. Yep. And we can certainly make dietary changes. We can make activity changes. We can do all the things that people normally do, take the supplements, the nutrients are, and they will improve the downstream symptoms.

But at the core of it's this black box that is the brain that until recently has been this black box is the core of so many illnesses, which are very difficult to treat through mainstream medicine. And in fact, I'd love to share an analogy which I first heard on an NC Robbins, course, which really kind of summarizes which is, you know, often we're standing on a bridge and we're seeing all these people being chucked in the river, and we're saving them from the river. Right. And we're saying, right, we know we're we're giving them supplements.

We're helping them through their diet. Right? Taking another person out of the river. But no one's asking the question, who's throwing these people in the river in the first place? Right? Why is the body functioning incorrectly? Does the body just randomly go wrong? No. I believe that ultimately the wiring of the brain is very fragile, and when we go through certain experiences, it can create emotional disorders, which we traditionally look at PTSD and things like that, but it can also create conditioned traumatic physiological disorders.

Yeah. And 70 to 80% of the illnesses that present themselves in a doctor's office, I believe, come under this category, you know, pain syndromes, anxiety, depression, fatigue, all of these things that a doctor gives you a few pills and says, right, get out of my office in five minutes. I can't do anything else for you. Actually, there are underlying reasons in the brain that can be accessed. We get our system back to optimal health. Yeah. No, I love that. Why is it so hard? I mean, that that concept like I, I'm a total believer in what you're saying.

When you go talk to people though, they still want to push it off to somebody else trying to fix them. Why is it so hard for people to understand the fact that so much of what we're struggling with is created by us and can be changed by us?

Brain Retraining and the Gupta Method 10:20

Why is that so difficult? Because I know you've worked with thousands and thousands and some people have accepted it maybe a little bit easier, but even people that intellectually understand it, they still resist. Aren't they? Yes. And this comes down to our cultural conditioning based on what's happened historically the last 200 years. Yeah. So really fascinating. We don't have time to go into it now, but essentially in the kind of 17th of 18th century in Europe, the church and science split. So anything to do with the mind, emotions, spirituality that was the confines of religion and Christianity, anything to do with hard science.

So things that can be measured and tested. That was the avenue of science. So the two split and that split, that kind of Cartesian, separation as it were, still persists to this day in modern medicine. So medicine is about measurement. Let's measure and test and scan what is going wrong and then create an appropriate either surgery or drugs or medicines, etc.. Right. Yep. So that's how the system works. But of course the black box was the brain because it's very difficult to measure what is going on in the brain.

Yeah. An analogy is a car. Right. So I remember in the 70s and 80s when cars went wrong, they were pretty much mechanical issues. Something went wrong with metal on metal. But in modern cars, what is it that goes wrong? It's the electrical system. Because causes so complicated these days. Yeah. So the physical body is what mainstream medicine is good at measuring and fixing. But in modern cars it tends to be the electrical system that tells the components what to do. And so it is with our brains and our nervous system.

That is the electrical system that is wired into every organ and cell, that tells the body what to do. So traditional medicine and the way that we have been programed is let's fix the physical body. So if this enzyme is low, let's boost this enzyme, etc.. But now we're saying what happens if it's actually software problems not hardware problems. Yeah. And that's a completely different way of looking at the body to say yes, it could be a software bug. Just like when your computer malfunctions. It's never normally the physical hardware, although that can happen.

It's often a software bug or something's not booting correctly. And you have to wipe clean the, the software system and start again. And so it is with the brain. When the brain gets stuck in these software bugs, what happens is it starts creating downstream symptoms in the body and gets stuck in a lack of homeostasis. And the purpose of neuroplasticity, brain retraining is to bring your brain and your nervous system back to its factory set in its default setting. So it resets all these little bugs and, and, and that in that state, we then our bodies naturally heal from so many different conditions and the body can actually heal.

Talk a little bit about symptoms because that was the thing that kind of threw me off when I was going through it. I was having some really weird symptoms, like blurred vision, like, oh my God, what? Do I have a brain tumor or something like stuff that I had. I just, I never had, had, had before in my life, you know, almost like fainting or dizziness, all sorts of things were happening to me that I said something really physical has to be wrong with me. And yet, when I used your methodology, they all went away.

All those symptoms went away. But the symptoms were what was scaring me. And I'm normally not that afraid. Positive thinker. And I was still thinking positive. I'm going to be fine. But it wasn't helping. The positive thinking wasn't helping it. I had to do something even more, but talk about symptoms, because a lot of people think, oh yeah, yeah, I know what he's talking about. You know, for some people it's the brain. But I've got real symptoms. I've got all this stuff happening to me. Talk a little bit about the symptoms and how they really are almost like an illusion for, for most people.

I mean, they're real, but they're not the real problem. Yes. Now this is where we get this is so I'm so glad you brought this question up because many people get confused here. The symptoms in our bodies from so many different conditions are often caused by an overreaction of our own nervous system and our own immune system. Right. So let's take a condition. We've all had flu, right? So when we have flu, we think, darn it, this flu virus is inside me and it's making me feel sick and nauseous. It's making me feel dizzy.

It's making me feel exhausted. Headache. It's all because of the virus? No, it is our own immune system responding to the virus which is causing all of these symptoms in the body. And so what's happening is as many physical symptoms as we may have, we may put down to something else going on. It is the response of our own bodies to perhaps a virus or a bacterial infection or an injury. Yeah. And so that means it's, it's highly empowering because that's our own reaction. So if we can moderate the reaction then we can bring the body back to balance.

That is a key thing. And an example of this, which many people will be able to rates relate to is Covid 19. Now many people think that people are dying from Covid 19. Yeah. What they're actually dying from is the body's own overreaction, what we call a cytokine storm, where suddenly the lungs become highly inflamed because the the brain believes we may not be able to fight off Covid 19. So it over response creates the inflammatory response. And that's why people are dying in hospitals. And many of the medications that prescribing are actually to moderate our immune system.

And if you imagine that nervous system and that immune system connects to every organ, every cell of our bodies, we can see how our own wiring, our own programing can completely throw us off track and bring up a whole host of different symptoms. Yeah, amazing. And a lot of a lot of the work you've been doing lately is with long haul Covid symptoms that people are having, helping them heal from that, and also pain. A lot of people struggle with pain. Talk about how pain is in the brain, right? It's not even so always.

Oh my knee, my knee, my my my my hip with you earlier today. But but pain can be created by the brain when there's no real reason necessarily for that pain. Talk a little bit about pain. To everybody, because I know everyone or many people are, have struggled or are struggling with pain in their body.

Why Symptoms and Illness Persist 17:20

Yes, of course. Now, the first thing is it's very important if somebody does have any of these symptoms, we're talking about extreme fatigue, pain that they do get this checked out by a doctor will be. Absolutely. Because there are many purely organic causes for many different symptoms. Yes. And people come to us once they've exhausted all terrains. That word, they've exhausted all traditional routes. Yeah. Then they come to us. So it's very important if someone's listening, that they don't just dismiss their pain as a neurological necessarily.

But once they've had that checked out and the doctor says, look, there's nothing else that we can find or nothing else we can do, then it's the probable cause of these exhaustion or fatigue. Pain is our own system creating it? Yeah. And if I can just start off from first principles about my hypothesis as to what causes these, and then I can explain how pain is, is, is, you know, perpetuated. So I always like to ask the biggest question of all, why are we here? Right. The big philosophical question now, luckily we're not gonna spend the next half an hour talking about that.

But let's say from a scientific perspective, why are we here? We're here because over millions of years of evolution, this beautiful nervous system and immune system and bodies that we've inherited has refined itself through plants and animals to get us to where we are now. And it's designed to survive. So we are survival machines. That is the number one priority of this brain, this nervous system, this body. So we can pass on our genes to the next generation. Yep. Survival of the fittest. Survival of the genes. Yep.

Now let's say, we let's take the example of long Covid or let's say let's take a novel Covid. Let's say somebody, contracts Covid 19 and the body is fighting off the virus. The immune system is fighting off the virus. Now, let's say the brain is for whatever reason, erring on the side of caution, thinking, I'm not sure if I can fight off this particular virus. Or perhaps we've got a weakened immune system because we've been working hard or we've been, you know, stressed out. So the immune system may be a little weakened and take longer to fight off the virus.

Yeah. Now, imagine in that moment, the brain makes a decision that survival is more important than wellness. And even once it fights off the virus, it's left a legacy where the brain says just to make sure I survive, if there's any little, symptom or condition or experience, which reminds me of Covid 19. Yeah. I must trigger my immune system and my nervous system. So the brain's now overstimulating the nervous system, immune system, creating those flu like symptoms in the body and those symptoms in the body now become what we call conditioned stimuli.

Now, it's a very scientific terms. I mean, that just triggers the triggers for our bodies, our brains. And so those symptoms double back to a hypersensitive brain. The hypersensitive brain says, I thought we were in danger. And now we have these symptoms in the body that confirms it to me. Perhaps we're still in danger from that virus or that infection. Right. Let me trigger the nervous system, an immune system, so it triggers the nervous system. Immune system. Creating muscle aches and pains are all the symptoms that we know.

The exhaustion, the post exertional malaise, the pain. Those symptoms are then in the body, the detected by a hyper vigilance hypersensitive brain and so on and so on. And we create that vicious cycle where the brain responds to the body, and the body responds to the brain. And for those of us who are math geeks or physics geeks, we know that symptoms when they're often in cycles or waves, it's because the inputs in the output of the system have become connected. So now we don't need an external virus or infection or chemical to create this lack of homeostasis.

We have our own brains and bodies kind of playing a game of tennis, constantly volleying the ball against each other, creating chronic illness in the body. And the way this relates to pain is that once we've had all the other things checked, it is likely that let's say we have pain in our legs. For instance, the brain may be detecting that pain in the leg and may be seeing it as evidence that there is some kind of potential infection or injury or something going on in the legs, which requires defensive response.

That defensive response is inflammation. Let's send tightness into those areas. Let's send, you know, inflammation. Muffin to dominated. Let's make sure we're fighting off whatever's going on in the legs. Right. Which then creates the pain and the tightness and the, you know, the inability to walk too far, which then those symptoms come back to our hypersensitive, hyper vigilant brain. Oh. Is something still wrong? Let me send more of that defensive strategy to the legs, which creates more symptoms and pain.

Once again, we are caught in the vicious cycle. And most importantly of all, both at a localized level and a centralized level. The pain signals get magnified and the pain networks become hypersensitive. So something which actually isn't that painful may well be getting magnified in the brain. Right? And studies show that actually things like meditation, deep relaxation techniques lower pain by reducing the sensitivity of pain. Sensitive pain networks. Yeah. And so that's how they have an impact.

So pain in the body where it has no obvious organic cause, and we've exhausted other routes. It may well be down to some neural rewiring that is required to to reset the body. Yeah. And I can't I can't say enough about your program. Your program. I should, you should be paying me as a testimony because it's really true. I your program was life changing for me. So it's amazing. And even just your explanation today, I hope people really understanding the power of what Ashok is saying, because this is not an explanation that you get from many other people out there in the world, even so-called experts.

They don't quite understand it at the level that that your hypothesis and your theory has proven out and work for people like me. I remember going to bed at night and I probably mentioned this earlier, but going to bed at night and sleeping ten hours thinking, okay, I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning feeling refreshed and I would wake up feeling exhausted, or even if I had a little energy. The first little thing, first of all, work I would do in my business. I would then feel exhausted and I didn't understand why until you you explained just like you did earlier.

My brain was hypervigilant. It was very sensitized. Any little thing was going to start creating stress and just drain my energy. But I learned that from you. So thank you and I hope a lot of people will take to heart what Ashok is talking about today. How can they find out you're going to give them? I know a little bit of an exercise to do, but how can they find out more information about the Gupta method? Where can they go? So they can come to our website, which is Gupta program.com. Yeah. And on there there's lots of free videos that they can watch.

There's a 28 day free trial. So you know commitment. See if this is the right approach for you. Yeah I didn't we even give away kind of free meditation as well. So there's lots of different things people can do there. And then if they feel that they're ready to commit to our program, then they can purchase it online. So it's delivered through the internet. There's webinars with myself, there's videos, it's audio exercises and a very loving, supportive community. Yeah. Because sometimes when you're going through this on your own, it can feel so isolating.

Yeah. But we've got like thousands of people working together answering those questions buddying up to support themselves and through that healing, as well.

Pain, Sensitization, and Long COVID 25:40

And as you as you probably know, we we have done several scientific studies on our work. Yes. And until we have the large scale phase three trial, which is what we're working on right now, we actually offer a one year money back guarantee so people can try the treatments, see if it works for them, if it doesn't get their money back, you know. Yeah, it's, but the scientific studies are really important to us. And we've recently just published what we believe is the first randomized, controlled trial ever published on the Neuroplasticity Brain Retraining Program.

It was published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, which is one of the top ten journals in the world. Yeah. It showed that, just after an eight week intervention, compared to a control, there was close to a 40% reduction in fibromyalgia scores, but zero effects in the control group. Wow. And there was a halving of pain, a halving of anxiety and depression and a 50% increase in functional capacity. And that was just after eight weeks. After eight weeks. Wow. Yeah. Which when this is a six month program.

So we're very excited that that's just been published and it's created a lot of buzz, a lot of interest from, many different doctors who are now prescribing our program. But now we're looking for the phase three trial. So we definitely want to go down the mainstream scientific routes to prove this is an effective approach. Oh, absolutely. This should be mainstream. This, this this is medicine practiced at its most powerful and purest form I love it. What are some so people that are watching may have certain conditions, and they know people in their lives that have conditions.

What are what are the primary conditions that people come to the Gupta method for? So the main ones tends to be any in chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and long haul Covid, which is the ones you've mentioned. Okay. But often it's conditions which have been triggered by something external. So mold illness, which is a very unique and unusual condition, chemical sensitivities, food sensitivities, talk about food sensitivities. So that's an interesting one because lots of people are getting tested now.

And I'm, you know, I've got, food sensitivity to this and that. And the other we had, somebody come over to our house recently that had, they had to radically change their diet because of food sensitivities. Now, certain things you probably don't want to eat anyways just because they're not that healthy. But but having not even the choice to eat certain foods that are healthy, like some of the food sensitivities are to healthy vegetables or things that normally would would nourish your body. But people can't eat them.

How does a food sensitivity develop that? That doesn't sound like that would be normally like chronic fatigue or. But it is pretty much the same thing right. Yeah. Remember our brains are survival machines. They want to survive and they will always over protect to ensure survival. So let's say somebody is going through a very what we call a sensitive sensitizing event. So that might be a divorce, a relationship breakup, losing your job, financial worries, whatever kind of stress, anxiety someone might be experiencing now, what tends to happen then?

There tends to be alterations in our gut. So we know that many people stress goes directly to their gut and they feel tightness and tension in the gut. And then what happens is we may then eat foods which the gut thinks is this good for me or bad for me. In my altered states where I'm not feeling the best. Yeah. And many people find that their food sensitivities keep increasing so they eat one food. Define for a while, then that one becomes, their bodies become sensitive to that, then another one, then another one is because the gut is literally making decisions saying, no, this is probably bad. No, this is good.

No, this is probably bad and therefore creates that sensitivity reaction to warn you not to have that food any longer. Yeah. Now the challenges, even once your original anxiety or stressful event has gone, it leaves a legacy in the gut, which is we must keep being sensitive to that food and that's what we're retraining to say. Hey we no longer need to be sensitive to that food. Yeah. And sometimes that can be because that food, caused food poisoning, for instance. So it actually was a dangerous food at one point in time, but is no longer a dangerous food.

Yeah. So we have patients who sometimes are down to three foods. They can only eat three foods, and anything else just sets them off. Yeah. I'm step by step over the space of weeks using the brain retraining. They're they're able to gradually introduce all of the foods that they're sensitive to. And as you say, we don't say. Right. You know, if you're sensitive to a McDonald's, right. But if you're sensitive to a blueberry, that's. Come on now, blueberries not the problem. No. Exactly. So over time, whether it's chemical sensitivities or food sensitivities, they're able to improve.

And we believe we are on the dawn of a new medicine, what we call bio electrical medicine. So who knows in 40 to 50 years time or 100 years time, if you have any of these conditions a doctor not can't normally treat, you might go to a bioelectrical clinic and they'll plug some electrodes in. And if you have hay fever or asthma or any of the conditions we've described, any, they'll plug you in, rewire the brain, unplug you. Great. You're done. Your brain reset. But until we get to that advancement in technology, yeah, we're kind of the stopgap, which is actually we can rewire the brain using these novel, unusual techniques and bring us back to the reset, the default setting.

Yeah. And I'm a huge fan of your work. One of the guests that we had on this summit is doctor. Cheng Ron, good friend of mine, medical doctor. And the one of the statistics he started off with was and I can't even remember the number, but it was like this huge number of people that die every day from medication. They've got symptoms. They go. They go take medication. The medication kills them. And they could be learning how to get over these conditions without any med. The medication never was going to help them.

I mean, help relieve maybe some of the symptoms, but it was destroying other parts of their body or their immune system or their cardiovascular system. So so I love the way that you're leading people. Like you said, you always want to go get checked out and make sure that you're under the care of force of physician, but at the same time, you want to take some control over your health and you help people do that. So you say your program is six months. Is that about the amount of time it takes to truly transform the brain?

We like to say six months because people become complacent. Yeah. One a day. Right. They will. Yeah, exactly. And then they say, right, I did it. I did it for five seconds. Why am I not better?

Food Sensitivities and Bioelectrical Healing 33:00

Good on. And many people do get better within weeks and they get to generate the patterns. Within a couple of months they'll get up to about 80%, but then they'll become complacent and think, right, I've done it. I can throw myself into the stressful life that I had earlier on. Yeah, and we say, no, we want to get you well, but we want you to stay. Well, yeah. That's the most important thing. So we don't want to become complacent. Continue with these tools for at least six months because our system is still sensitive for a while.

So you may have retrained it. But what happens if the brain suddenly experiences another stressor and then goes back into that altered state again? But generally within weeks and months people will notice, shifts in the energy level, shifts in the way their body is responding, sometimes within hours. So we've had people within a few days within we had I had a lady last week, had a normal Covid for a year, was bedbound for a year. Within a couple of weeks of using our program, she's up to 90% and walking five kilometers a day.

So it can be quite quick. But we we never want people to become complacent about it. Well, and that was important in the way that you pre frame that and put that out in your program. Even for me who you know, I'm used to committing and and making sure I give it time. That was a great little reminder because when you're not feeling well you want to get better super quick. And that's why we're going to all these doctors are trying, you know, the magic pill and just you reminding people in the program, reminding me when I was taking your program that it's going to take a little while, stick to it.

It will happen though. It will happen. And your new program, because I did it back when you have the DVD, your new program is beautiful. You filmed it in Switzerland, like incredibly well done. So thank you for letting me experience that to your new program. It's really, really cool. I love what you've done there. Yeah, we had a lot of fun actually filming that in in Switzerland, the beautiful healing green mountains. So generally people I found just by watching the videos, they stop hitting hills, straight away.

So that's always nice to nice to hear as well. Absolutely. So what's one thing everybody listening can do right now to start on this journey that we've been talking about? Can you give us a little exercise or something? We can do? Sure. It's a very, very simple exercise, which is just that body awareness. Okay. That when we have a particular a persistent thought in the mind. Yep. And just to say, you know, obviously we're talking about energy here generally, when people have low energy they think, okay, I need to change my diet or I need to exercise.

But actually it's understanding the power of our thoughts that, a worry is one of the biggest drainer of our energy. Yeah, yeah. Somebody could be sitting at a desk all day. They haven't moved. They've eaten a wonderful diet. But actually, just by worrying sitting in front of the desk, at the end of the day, they're exhausted. Yeah. How does it get exhausted? Okay. It's from that mental churning and that mental worry. Yeah. And so I'd like to give people a technique. It's not so much for physical illness but for but actually just keeping our energy levels up when we've got a persistent negative thoughts.

And it's called the new groove technique. Okay. That sounds like a bit of a dance move, but it's not a dance move. It's just a way of rewiring the brain very quickly. And I'll do the first few stages of it, and then in the free gifts that I set, I've got, there's a video there that takes you through the full process. Okay. Which is which. So make sure you check out the free gift on the summit web page. And but we'll get started with, right now, the very first part of it. Sure. So the first thing is that whenever we are noticing a particular thought pattern, which is repetitive, yeah, let's say someone's caught is an idiot, right?

Yeah. Now they call it is an idiot words. But how many times do they call us an idiot when we replay the tape in the brain again and again and again? Right. It it it it it, so in that moment, we need to have an anti Robbins. And your self talk about this is the the kind of pattern interrupt. So that could be a stop. So we say stop stop stop singing out loud or laughing out loud or something to break that particular pattern. And then a slow deep breath in. So that's the second stage is, taking a deep breath in.

And then as we breathe out, imagining someone that represents love to us. Yeah. So this can be a figure from your religion or spirituality. So if someone's a Christian, it might be Jesus. If they're, you know, Buddhist it might be Buddha, etc.. If or it could be a pet or a family member, someone that we connect with, with a sense of love. Yeah. So the first s is stop. Okay. The second s is surrender. We are surrendering and letting go of our worries and our stresses and cares towards a representation of love.

Yeah. So let's now imagine something that's stressing us out. So might be before it. Before you, everybody do this little exercise with Ashok. Like, don't just watch him do it. Like he'll lead you through this. Let's practice it right now. I'll do it, too. Go ahead. Great. So let's think of something that's bothering us. It could be, Stress is about what we need to do later on. Or argument we've had with somebody. Yeah, let's do this with our eyes closed. So we get focused. So the first thing is we just become aware of that repetitive negative thought in our mind. So let's just become aware of that.

And during the day as soon as we become aware of it in our minds, let's do that first s which is stop. So in our minds, let's just say stop, stop, stop. Then we take a deep breath in. Imagine a representation of love in front of us, so it could be a figure from your religion or spirituality and breathe out and imagining you're surrendering and letting go of that emotion and that thoughts. And it's being absorbed by a representation of love. So you're carefree and relaxed because you've released and let it go.

Okay, so let's keep our eyes closed. The third s is shift perspective. Some people call this reframing shift. Perspective is saying, how could I look at this situation differently? That would make me feel better. So if we had an argument with somebody or they said something that was very nice, we could say, well, I'm going to shift perspective on that and say, well, maybe they were just having a bad day or, you know, it's not such a big deal what they said. Maybe there's something I could learn from it.

Or the ultimate shift perspective is, hey, this is for my own growth and learning to reduce my reactivity to what people say. Okay, so you think of a perspective. So now all of us, let's think of a new perspective on this situation which can make us feel better and make us not feel this is such a big deal that we're getting stressed by it. So let's spend a moment just reflecting on a new perspective. And keeping our eyes closed, notice how that shift in perspective actually just begins to release our arms and shoulders, and we feel less tense and less stressed by what was bothering us.

And the final is keeping our eyes closed. The fourth S is substitute. How do we choose to feel in this situation? If we've absorb this new perspective, how do we now choose to feel? So in the case of having an argument with somebody, we may choose to have information such as I am calm and relaxed about that person. I imagine I've let it go now. So in that fourth s, let's think of a sentence and I am I feel sentence which summarizes how we choose to feel about that situation. And in a moment, I'm going to ask you to take a breath in and imagine how you would feel if you truly had shifted perspective and let it go.

Whatever that situation was. Yeah. So now let's think of that sentence. I am calm about the situation or I feel differently about this or whatever it is.

New Groove Technique and Closing Advice 41:40

Let's take a slow, deep breath in. And with a smile in our minds, we can say that sentence, that new perspective that substitutes. And imagine how our mind and body would feel if we have embraced how we choose to feel about it. Breathing slowly and deeply with a smile as you do so. Notice how you breathe in and out with a smile. How the body may relax a little more. Just notice the contrast. If any, between how you felt at the beginning about that person or situation and how you feel now. What's different?

Quality of feeling is different now. Hold on to that good feeling. Let's take a slow, deep breath in. And breathe out with a smile. And when we're ready, we can just gently open our eyes. That was awesome. Thank you so much. That was really, really cool. I hope everybody enjoyed that. Just recap those those steps again. The four S's are really quick for people of course. So the new groove technique has four S's. Number one is stop. So that stopping and taking a deep breath in number two is surrender.

So finding your representation of love and surrendering the pain, the negativity, connecting with that spirit aspect of yourself. The third s is shift perspective. How can I look at this situation differently? That would make me feel better? How can I be more mature about the situation? Yeah, and the fourth S is substitute. So imagining a whole mind body feeling of how do I choose to feel about this situation? And if I embrace this new perspective, how much better can I feel about it? And feeling in every and imagining it in every cell of your body, and then open your eyes and repeating that process each time the brain gets stuck in that repetitive thinking and by repeating this process, you'll find eventually something that you might have obsessed about for weeks or days or hours suddenly just dissolves away.

Yeah, I love it, I love it, and I especially, I especially resonated with the third step. Find a different perspective, because I know when I was going through my chronic fatigue, I it was tough. But it was such an amazing learning and growth experience for me. And I tell people now, it's the seminar you never would have signed yourself up for, but you got so much out of it. Like it just transformed your life. So, so I love that you brought that up for people, because people that are struggling with some of these illnesses, if they use it correctly, if they use this experience correctly, they're going to grow in ways they never would have grown.

They're going to, you know, use your technique, which will create a whole new set of possibilities moving forward in their lives so that there can be a true blessing and any experience that we're going through that we all that's terrible or that's bad could be a gift. And I find it usually is. So I love that you brought that up. Yes, absolutely. And that's it. Definitely. The analogy we use in, when people are going through chronic illness because you say you shake your fist at the universe or God or whatever you believe in saying, how could you make me go through this suffering, you know, like that kind of thing.

But it's only often, many years later, you understand the transformative effect of that particular condition. And, you know, we talk about the caterpillar turning into the butterfly that when we go through these very challenging illnesses, it can feel like we go into this cocoon where literally we're isolated from friends and family and we feel tight and we feel, depressed. But in that stage, it is a transformative stage because we learn about ourselves, we learn about our patterns, and it takes the butterfly.

I struggling out of the cocoon. Yes. During the transformation that strengthens the wings. So as we struggle out of that cocoon, as we learn what we need to learn to be able to heal and get better, it strengthens the wings of the butterfly so it can emerge and is completely transformed from the caterpillar. It was initially and now has the strength to fly it, experience life in a whole new dimension. And for many people, chronic illnesses, is a transformation. It is a rebirth. It is often what I call a spiritual accelerator.

It moves us into a whole new stage of life. And when we see it in that perspective, we don't resist. We don't challenge, we don't feel upset by it. We see it as something that is going to help us in our next evolution in life. Absolutely. And in the real gift is seeing it while you're going through it, not waiting ten years after a meal. Yeah, that was something that shaped me. Start to see it right now and I suck. You've got a huge heart. I've loved having you, on on our summit and being able to talk with you and have you share your wisdom.

And thank you so much, not only for just being on the summit, but thank you for your work and all the the peoples whose lives you've changed and hopefully many, many more. You know, I know it's thousands you've helped so far. I hope it gets in the millions. So thank you so much for being part of this summit. And thank you for your amazing work. And I thank you, Tom, for inviting me. And I sort of share anyone who's going through these illnesses just hold onto the hope there is a way forward. People do heal from this and you can do it too.

Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you for.