Why Diet Alone May Not Heal Your Gut

Summit Introduction and Gut-Nervous System Connection 0:00

Welcome everyone to the Gut Health and Longevity Summit. I am so glad you're here, and I want you to pause for just a moment, because what you are about to hear over the next few days could genuinely change the way you think about stress, your body, and your health from the inside out. Most of us have been taught to think about gut health in terms of what we eat, but the science is now making something undeniably clear. The state of your nervous system is just as powerful a force in shaping your gut microbiome as your diet.

Chronic stress, trauma, and nervous system dysregulation silently dismantle the gut ecosystem that controls your immune function, your hormones, your mood, and your longevity. Our experts are here to translate that science into action, and today's conversation is one that I've been especially excited about. What nervous system dysregulation is actually doing inside your gut, and what you can do to reverse it. So my next guest is Nathan Crane. He has done something most health educators have not.

He has healed himself against all odds, spent years building on one of the most comprehensive bodies of work on the relationship between the mind, the nervous system, and the body's capacity for healing. He is not here to tell you to think positive. Well, at least I hope not. But he is here to show you how science says, what about chronic stress is doing to your biology and what that reversal actually looks like? Nathan Crane is a health researcher, bestselling author, documentary filmmaker, and cancer researcher.

He is the founder of the panacea community and has spent over a decade studying the intersection of consciousness, healing and longevity science. He has produced over a dozen documentary films and docu series on cancer, plant based healing, mind body medicine, and so many other things, and his books including Becoming Cancer Free. His work is really integrating evidence based, plant based nutrition, nervous system regulation, mind body science, and he has interviewed hundreds of leading researchers, oncologists, survivors.

And his platform brings that science to hundreds. Now he's got something even newer in store for us. So I'm excited about this because this is the next evolution of healing and for him to be sharing. So, Nathan, welcome to our summit. Nisha, thank you for having me. And of course, I'm going to tell everyone to think positively because I'm not I don't want people thinking negatively, but I think there's more to it. But that's not the core solution. And in fact, in my work through the awakened process, one of the things that I see in clients all the time have tried everything.

They've changed their diet. They have tried all kinds of personal growth and positive thinking. They went to therapy for years. They've done the exercise and all the functional medicine things, a holistic things, even the conventional things. And yet they're still coming back with the second diagnosis of third diagnosis chronic dysbiosis, cancer, diabetes, you name it. And what they're missing is what I call the missing link, the missing link to healing, the missing link to health, the missing link to cancer.

I did a whole docu series on that called The Missing Link to Cancer, because I discovered this years ago that it's way beyond just positive thinking. And even though it's important and it's way beyond diet, even though that's important and it's way beyond exercise and detox and sauna and all these things, even though those are all important, I consider that to 20% bucket. And what we're talking about here is a nervous system, which I love, that you're doing this entire summit, really focusing on this and gut health, especially from a nervous system standpoint, is what's actually activating our nervous system, what's triggering it, what's causing us to be in this sympathetic state, what's caused us to be in this fight or flight state, and what does that do to our gut health?

And more importantly, what does that do to our overall health and our emotional well-being and our mental well-being? And so most people, even functional medicine doctors, many who are my colleagues, I love dearly, holistic practitioners and nature paths, and then certainly any oncologists who have moved into a more functional medicine approach still today. Most doctors that I know are still focusing on that 20%. Let's change your diet. Let's get you on supplements. Let's do some detox. All of that.

And very often they don't see the needle move. And these are the people who come to me. Just had a client the other day. There's been doing everything for years. And she comes with her third cancer diagnosis. I should've been doing everything right for years. And we do six sessions and she gets her blood work, bag says. I've never seen my immune system blood work markers looked this good in years. Why isn't anything I do? I'm not special. It's just we get to the root cause of this stuff, which is what's actually activating the nervous system

Chronic Stress, Dysregulation, and the Missing Link 4:49

to stay stuck in that fight or flight or freeze or shut down or fawning. And we start to regulate it and we get into a healthy, balanced, regulated state, and then the body can do it. It knows how to do which is heal itself and thrive and regenerate and restore and all the things we wanted to do. Yeah. You just reminded me of a patient who messaged me and she's like, hey, here's the blood work my doctor did. And I've never she's 71 years old. She's like, I've never seen it so normal in my entire life.

Whatever you're doing for me, keep doing. I'm like, okay, let's keep doing it. But all right, so let's start with this question. As I mentioned that most people have something most people have never been told about. We talk about gut health in terms of food, fiber, probiotics, fermented vegetables. And yes, all of that is very, very, very helpful. But you spent years studying how that nervous system is going to shape the gut, what is actually happening in the body when someone is chronically stressed, and why should we be thinking about the nervous system and the gut as one system?

And not to. Good question. So first of all, I know exactly what it's like to be chronically stressed and anxious and depressed and sick and ill. That's how I grew up. In fact, my teenage years, I was so sick and I had digestive issues and my skin was pale and I was broken out with acne everywhere, and I was depressed, and I was anxious and I was chronically stressed. And in fact, I was almost dead at 18. I was very sick, very ill. I had a lot of addictions. And at 18 I moved to San Diego and started my life over.

And I started researching what does it mean to be healthy and how can I heal myself, and how can I heal my body? And how can I live with more peace and contentment? And so I was, you know, over 20 years ago now, I've been on this personal growth and spiritual growth and health research path, not only healing myself and improving my life, but then going out and being able to reach and help millions around the world. And some of the things I've learned throughout that journey are exactly what you said is, when you are in this chronic stress state, which is most people don't even realize that they're in chronic stress.

They think are everything's okay, I'm fine. But when we really start asking, you know, what is your morning look like? What is your what thoughts are you having when you wake up? Do you get triggered often and easily? You know, someone cuts you off in traffic to you. Do you get pissed off and yell at them? You get a bill. Does it scare you? Are you constantly worrying about debts or finances? Do you worry constantly about your health or the food you're putting in your body? It creates worry if you if you just look at your shoulders now, are they can you drop them a little bit?

Is your body in that? Look at your hands, your body like, can you relax your shoulders and your body and your head and neck now and just notice like, oh wow. Yeah, I was a little tense. Very often our nervous system is in this protective mode, and we don't even realize it because when we're in this chronic stress and anxious state, it's actually due to some underlying reasons which will definitely get into like what's keeping us in that state. And when we're in that state, we have what I like to say is like a low grade, sympathetic fire that's burning constantly.

It's like you could imagine this little fire inside your body that's constantly burning. And that burning is damaging DNA. Damaging mitochondria is causing chronic inflammation. It's releasing excess cortisol, and it's literally down regulating your immune system. And we need our immune system to be able to find invaders, pathogens, viruses, bacteria, cancer cells, and clean them up and transform them and transmute them and get rid of them and repair them. Right. We need the immune system for all that produce NK cells and natural killer cells, and T cells and B cells to go out and clean all this up.

Well, if you have autoimmune disease, you have cancer, you have some chronic health condition. Your immune system's not functioning at the level that it could be or should be. And so first of all, this is not to blame you or say you're wrong or any of what you're doing is bad or any of that. It's just, first of all, to normalize it, to recognize like, this is so normal in our modern day. It's also protective. These things are protective patterns that your nervous system has learned to keep you feeling safe now.

And we'll unpack that in a bit. Hopefully. But because that's where the root is actually, that's where the healing is, is unpacking that last statement. But at the same time, these protective patterns are nervous system learned many years ago in our life are no longer serving us, and they keep us in that vigilant state, kind of constantly on guard, feeling unsafe even when we are safe. Right when you're out at midnight or you're out on the street, it's dark at night, you're by yourself. Maybe you end up in an alley or a dark street or something, like you want kind of your spidey senses turned on.

You want to be a little bit like, you know, able to run or fight or do something in case you do end up in a dangerous situation. Now, you don't want that on during the day when you're at work. You don't want that on when you're sitting having a conversation with a loved one. You don't want that on in your day to day when you're even when you're driving. In fact, because what that means is you're in this chronic sympathetic state. And when sympathetic nervous system is turned on, on guard, vigilant, or shut down, it's either or.

And then most of us move between the two. Vigilance on guard gets to a point overwhelm shutdown. Right. How many people watching right now are listening can relate to that. It's like, yeah, I'm on edge. I'm on guard. I'm you know, you get your with a spouse or partner or somebody or a boss or situation and it's like you're feeling that ten city that tension. And sometimes it gets overwhelming and then there's withdrawal and then shut down. And most people actually oscillate between the two. What that means is it's a nervous system.

It's trying to protect you, but it's learned to be unsafe even when it should be safe. And when that happens constantly, this low grade fires inside your body, constantly burning, tearing your body apart from the inside out, destroying your gut microbiota, actually creating dysfunction in the gut just like you're talking about which gut is. Roughly 70% of our immune system is in our intestines and in our gut. And so when that's happening, and then there's chronic inflammation in the gut and how it's when sympathetic is turned on, that means parasympathetic is actually turned off.

And when it's like this that means immune systems turned off. And so Bruce Lipton, colleague of mine, who's been in a number of my films and projects we've done together, he talks about this so clearly that it's like we have this system that's really designed to keep us safe. And, you know, he gives an ancient analogy of being chased by like a saber toothed tiger and that you want all you want your immune system shut off. You want all your blood, all your energy, everything to go to your limbs so you can run or fight or flight.

Now, in our modern day, that might be an aggressive dog. It might be an aggressive person. It might be saving somebody from burning car. You want you want your immune system shut off for those few minutes to save your life or save somebody else's life. But that should be a very rare circumstance, very rare once in a while. The problem is, most people actually living in that state constantly and constantly tearing down the body, allowing this perfect environment for disease to show up. And I'll pause in a moment and see what other questions you have.

But basically, I guess your other question was around like, these are not two systems, it's all one system. And so in the work that I've done over the last 20 years, working with many, many clients of all kinds of chronic elements, I look at everything through a very holistic lens. And holistic to me means mind, body, spirit, environment, relationships, work, finances, purpose in life, internal environment, external environment that includes food includes what you put on your body and in your body, where you put in your mind how you show up in the world.

So very holistic. We look at we are a mind, we have a mind and we have different aspects of our mind. We have conscious mind, subconscious mind, we have wakeful state, sleeping state. We have deep meditative state, contemplative state of mind. We also have an intellect and an ego identification. There's many, many layers to us. We have a physical body, we have an energy body. And all of this is all very scientifically validated. And then we have an external environment and our internal environment.

We have more viral cells and bacterial cells on our body and in our body than we do human DNA. In fact, we have more viral and bacterial DNA than we have human DNA in our own body. So there's this beautiful, co-creative, collaborative ecosystem within us and on our skin and our eyes and our hair and everywhere that keeps us alive. And so to keep us thriving, we have to keep that community healthy. And to do that, that community also needs to feel safe and to feel safe. We have to feel safe inside and to feel safe inside.

Our nervous system has to be regulated and to feel safe. And to do that, we have to get to the root of what's this regulating it, which we could talk about in a minute. But let me pause there and see if you have any other. All right. So let me summarize this for the viewers because that was a lot to unpack. All right. So let's just like summarize it like systematically. So you mentioned the sympathetic nervous system which we all know. You know we have this autonomic actually is the autonomic nervous system that sits above that.

Either is a sympathetic which is where most people are stuck in this like always activated on state, which then in that case, when we are in sympathetic we're not in parasympathetic, which is your rest and digest state. That's also the state where you digest your food and you repair your body. So if we are not in the digest your food, repair your body, we are in that sympathetic state. Now another thing, like when people are thinking about like my nerves are fried and like, you know, I'm just I've got anxiety, I'm so rattled and all this stuff people don't realize, like, your nerves don't just live in your brain and there's actually 500 million neurons lining the GI tract, right?

So when you get that gut feeling about something really taking a moment and creating this self-awareness in your body can help you attune to that gut feeling even better, which I know you're awake in process, allows you to do that. So let's get into the next question. So the next question is let's talk about terminology a little bit. So nervous system dysregulation is a term that I'm hearing more and more. And I don't think most people have any idea if it applies to them. So what does a dysregulation actually look like in the body.

And how do we know it's happening. Oh that's a great question. So I would say the the first most easy way to understand that in your own life is in a normal day to day situation. I'm at home, I'm having a conversation. I'm just doing my day to day. If I feel unsafe in some way or reactive or triggered, that means my nervous system is actually dysregulated and people go, oh, whoa, whoa. Hang on a second. That's like normal being human, right? It is normal being a human. But there's also something available to all of us way beyond that, that we are.

Nature is actually to be at peace and content and not triggered, even when we're in a very triggering or challenging situation. I'll give you an example. Okay. I was going to give you an example. Something that happened. Go ahead. Your example. But I'm going to give you one which I think many people can kind of resonate with is that maybe you receive an email or a text from somebody that was not something you were expecting,

How Nervous System Dysregulation Shows Up in the Body 17:10

and now your body is like like you said, like the shoulders go up. It's like what just happened here and it can like totally derail your day. In fact, for me, in the past, like, if you would have asked me in my 20s, yeah, it would derail my day. It would be real, like three days without learning the tools about manage this. So I think that's a very common example that I see, you know, like that somebody like has a conversation with somebody, somebody gets a text, something like that. And it just it sets them off.

So what's your example? That's a great that's a great one. And so yeah let me give. So there's also there's a spectrum here. So you get a text or a bad comment from somebody on a post on social media or something. On one end of the spectrum, let's go to the most extreme spectrum. That thing triggers you in that moment and that stays with you for hours, days, weeks, or even months. Right? Your mind goes back to that and it like makes you feel a certain way again. Or how could that person in the next day you're having conversations person poses thing or send me a set?

Can you believe that? And now you're triggered again. And maybe that continues for days or weeks, right? That's kind of an extreme example of where in fact a lot of people are. And again, there's no judgment here. I used to be there for sure, 100% with a lot of things. You know, another end of that spectrum is let's just maybe go to the middle ground would be like, that happens. Maybe you've done some deeper emotional healing. Maybe you have some emotional and nervous system regulation tools. Maybe you do some a little bit of breathwork, or maybe you have some deeper kind of spiritual knowledge around life and you realize, oh, you know what?

It's really not that big of a deal. It triggered you. It kind of sets you off for a little bit, but you get your nervous system calm down and recalibrated without suppressing a lot of us on a personal growth path or spiritual path, or people watching this have a really strong part of themselves that's really good at focusing on the positive and doing and achieving and being better. But the consequence I in my own life, and I see with a lot of clients I work with who have that strong part, suppress the feelings that have come up, which actually underneath contributes to that low grade fire that's burning underneath the nervous system.

So that very often happens in the middle part. But some people have a good balance of let's move more to like three quarters over here, maybe to this side where triggers have some nervous system. You're able to let it go quickly and you don't suppress those feelings. They come up, you acknowledge them, you recognize, okay, I'm feeling that way. Okay. Let me have some compassion for that. Some understanding, some curiosity. Why am I feeling that way? Why am I feeling this in my gut? Or this fear or this anger?

You bring some some compassion, some curiosity to it, and then your tools allow you to let it go quickly or your practices. And then let's go all the way down over here where those things don't trigger you at all. Someone can leave you a bad comment, and you feel absolutely at peace and you actually just send them love. Someone says something to that would normally trigger you and it doesn't trigger you anymore. And it's not a suppression. It's not like, oh, I'm good. It doesn't bother me. It literally does not trigger you at all because you've healed the underlying emotional wounds from earlier in your life that caused you to be triggered in the first place.

So it's a spectrum, and wherever you're at in the spectrum of different things is totally fine. Obviously, we want to move further along that spectrum to where we have more and more and more peace and contentment, understanding and curiosity and compassion in our life in every situation that happens, so that whatever challenges arise, they trigger us significantly less. They last significantly less time in our bodies because this all happens semantically as well. Which is why think about when you're afraid your body tenses, right?

We get these. You might breathe faster, or when you're excited, same thing. Breath might might increase, but maybe you're actually more open, right? So the body changes semantically based on the emotions that we're feeling. And these emotions get stored in the body. And this is the work that I do, is we do a lot of somatic work. There's about 12 modalities that I incorporate into the awaken process. So we're working semantically in the body. We've heard the issues are in the tissues. The body keeps the score. It's so true.

It's in the mind, it's in the body and it's in the nervous system. And the body it gives us, gives us so many answers and wisdom to what's actually going on and where the real healing work is. But when we heal these deeper emotional wounds, that and subconscious beliefs that were entrained in us since we were kids, then that's when the triggers go away. The things that used to trigger me years ago, they don't anymore. I mean, 90% of them are gone. You know, I still have some things here and there, some stuff I'm working on, stuff I'm healing and letting go.

But 90% of what used to make me upset, angry, mad, trigger, judgmental, afraid just isn't there anymore. And my nervous system is in a state of of constant regulation. And when it's in, you know, majority of the time, I'm not perfect by any means, but majority of the time and the practices, I do really help with that. So when you're in a more regulated state, more often, we're not talking about being perfect here, say more regulated state more often, meaning majority of the time you have more contentment, more peace, more happiness, more you're just okay with life.

Life becomes more joyful, by the way, which we all want more happiness. You think more clearly. You can make better decisions. The things that would freak you out before don't freak you out so much. And what does that mean physically? It means your digestion is working better. It means your inflammation gets turned down. It means your blood markers are going to be improved. It means your immune systems turned up. It means that your body is able to fight the the invaders that are happening to it, and that just everything physically, biologically works so much better for your benefit.

Here's the other thing I've learned in working with so many clients and doing this work for so long is all of our systems and our bodies, and everything about us wants to move towards healing. We often think the body is working against me. I have a lot of clients over the years who would think, why is my body attacking me? Auto immune disease, for example. Why is my body against me? Why does my body work for me? And the truth is, it wants to move towards healing. I mean, just you have an accidental cut, you don't have to do anything and your body is going to heal that cut, right?

I mean, for most people, some people it may not because your body is really in a bad in a very challenged state. But most people, your body's going to heal that cut easily on its own without you doing anything. You put a Band-Aid on it. You're not healing it with a Band-Aid. You put some disinfected on it. That's not healing it. Your body's doing the healing. We just have to help our bodies get into a state and heal the underlying root causes of what's keeping it out of that healing state. And then it does the rest all on its own, perfectly designed to heal itself and take care of itself.

Okay. All right. So to summarize that there's a lot more to it. I think that if we are thinking about nervous system dysregulation, it is more than anxiety. It's, you know, it's a host of different symptoms, whether they are GHG related symptoms like bloating, food sensitivity, skin issues, immune suppression, which you already mentioned, poor sleep, fatigue, all of this. But there's one area that we need to talk a little bit about before we get into some of the processes of the awakening process, because we need to understand more about the vagus nerve, and the vagus nerve keeps appearing in research. It's been described almost like a superhighway between the brain and the gut.

So tell me, what is the vagus nerve actually doing when we are thinking about this state of, you know, feeling unsafe feeling, you know, suppressed feeling like the world is against us, like what is actually going on here with a vagus nerve. Tell me more about that. Yeah. Good question. So the vagus nerve is a massive nerve network that runs from the brainstem all the way down the spine, all the way through every major organ and system in the body. And in fact, it's actually sending more information to the brain than vice versa.

Similar to you talked about, we have more neurons in the gut than we do our own brain, which is why the guts been called the second brain. And same with the heart. In fact, the heart's been called the third brain, or vice versa. Some people call the heart to second brain and the gut the the third brain. Just like the heart people. Most people don't realize this. The heart actually sends more information, including hormone production, energetic information to the brain than the brain does to the heart.

Just like the gut, the gut sending tremendous amount of information to the brain and vice versa. And the vagus nerve is doing the same thing. And so what's it doing? Vagus nerve is connecting to all the major organ and organ systems in the body and spread all throughout. To look up a picture of the vagus nerve is actually quite fascinating. It's like a root. It's like almost like if you look at a tree that's got this root system that goes down under the earth very much like a tree. In fact, it's bringing up information, nutrients, vital information from the soil, the microbes, all of that into the tree to give information to that tree.

Did you know there's like, the cottonwood? I believe it's a, the cottonwoods, the the the aspen that are like one giant. You go to an aspen forest, they could go on for miles and miles. It's like one giant network of trees all connected. And this is true in forests, for example, there can be an invasion, like an infestation of a beetle that's eating the trees, miles and miles and miles away. And it'll send that information through the mycelium network, through the root system, through the trees, all the way throughout the entire forest, so that plants and trees, you know, miles and miles away, can start producing some molecules that help defend against those invaders.

Fascinating nature. You know, things that are the intelligence is in nature. We have incredible intelligence like that in our own body. And so the vagus nerve is taking all this information up, and then it's giving information back to the brain. And that's directing what's happening to our nervous system, which is, you know, we talk about autonomic nervous system, right? We have a lot more in terms of the nervous system, but we don't need to go into all of that in this. We're just talking about two branches of the autonomic nervous system, which is just one branch of kind of the big picture of the nervous system.

When the signals that we send to the vagus nerve tell the rest of the organs whether they're safe and what they should be doing, should you be producing antibodies, should you be producing anti-inflammatories, should you be producing T cells, B cells, immune cells? Or should you be sucking, you know, holding that energy? Should you be producing cortisol and more fight or flight hormones? Should you be producing dopamine and serotonin. All this vagus nerve is responsible for, you know, this information, telling all these organs and organ systems what to produce and what to do.

And so there are things that like you can like tools that like stimulate the vagus nerve that are meant to kind of calm the vagus nerve down and move out of that fight or flight. Honestly, I'm kind of like 5050 on the tools because life happens and you're just gonna walk around all day long and just, like, use a tool all the time and just think it's going to cure you. It doesn't because you're not addressing the underlying root cause, which is causing the vagus nerve to feel, you know, this kind of deregulatory pattern.

So how do we actually impact the vagus nerve? So it keeps us in that parasympathetic that rest rejuvenation,

The Vagus Nerve and Gut-Brain Communication 29:28

healing digestive state, which is what we want, which is really we're talking about vagus nerve. It's like we want it to support us being in that parasympathetic state. And that is where, you know, a lot of the tools, a lot of the modalities that we use in the awakening process, that's what they all do. In fact, they all stimulate the vagus nerve so that our organs can work better and we can be in that more anti-inflammatory pro, you know, immune regulatory and nervous system regulation mode. That's really what the vagus nerve does. Okay.

So now you mentioned this a number of times. You work with this process called awaken process, a specific somatic practice for nervous system regulation. And now that we've defined that. So without making this a commercial, can you explain what it is and what is the physiologic mechanism that makes it different from saying simply telling somebody, hey, calm down, breathe some more. Tell me a little bit more about this awaken process. So what I discovered over my own healing journey was that there was a number of different modalities.

I kind of naturally, organically just grace. It was like Grace introduced me to so many different modalities that were responsible for healing many of my own childhood wounds and traumas and subconscious beliefs and patterns and addictions in my life. And I look back over my life and I thought, what were the most powerful healing things that happened? And how was I able to transform these addictions and let them go? Because at the root of every addiction is actually emotional trauma. People focus on the addiction.

And, you know, this could be food addiction, sugar addiction, could be drug addiction, could be alcohol addiction, could be addiction to drama, to fighting, to arguing. It could be addiction to scrolling, addiction to late night TV, any addiction underneath that is an emotional pattern and a wounding process. And when we get to the root of that, we heal the emotional pattern. I have a client, she had a 30 year. We did, and we never once talked about her. We'd addiction. We just healed the underlying emotional wounds and all of a sudden now she has control and she's able to stop smoking weed.

And this is true for any kind of addiction, but not only addictions. It's also true for the chronic elements that show up in our body the nervous system dysregulation. So discovering that what's at the root of all this, what's these childhood wounds? It's either like if you look at the Aces study that was done by CDC and Kaiser Permanente in the 90s, they discovered a group of emotional wounds that happened to pretty much all of us, which could be grouped into abuse or neglect. Things like verbal, emotional, physical, could be family members that were in jail or family members that just neglected.

You could be any kind of addiction in the household. Drug addiction, alcohol addiction, separation, divorce. Somebody's going to jail. There's a lot of different categories of what constitutes an adverse childhood experience. Well, we've all had these. And what they discovered was people who've had more of those three, 4 or 5 or more actually had up to a 20 year shortened lifespan, a significant increase in every major chronic disease on the planet, from cancer to autoimmune to diabetes to you name it, as well as, you know, chronic stress and anxiety and all these patterns happening in adult life.

Well, how is that all these things happen to me as a child. They're gone. Their paths. I let them go. Well, no, you didn't let them go because they're stored in your nervous system semantically, in your body, in your tissues and in your subconscious mind. So what I discovered helped me to not only heal physically, but mentally, emotionally, and then all the addictions that I had was healing his underlying wounds in traumas, and then everything else just healed on its own. It's like it's a symptom, just like chronic inflammation.

It's a symptom. Just like cancer is a symptom. Diabetes, autoimmune is a symptom. That's not the problem. It's a symptom of a deeper underlying root cause. And so I looked at all these modalities that helped me heal these things and started working with them together in like a very synergistic way. And so it's a combination of ancient practices, which include various gentle breathwork practices and meditative guided practices, but also with neuroscience and modern psychology, including parts work and integrative somatic parts work, as well as some psychological practices.

And I realized that when I was working with clients, by integrating these 12 modalities together, we were getting results that they'd been. We're getting results in three, four, five sessions that they were trying to get for 20 years. And so while it took me, you know, almost two decades to heal so many things in my own life, I mean, there were chunks of time where things were healing all along the way. Now, with this kind of process, we're seeing just incredible results in such a short time. It's not because I'm special or I have like this unique thing or whatever, it's that it's by integrating, which is why integrative medicine is so powerful.

It's integrating kind of the best of all these different modalities in a way that's gentle, safe, and works with each person's individual nervous system. Look, whatever you're dealing with, if you realize that at the root of that chronic element, chronic stress, anxiety, chronic fear, or any chronic health condition, in fact, underneath that, there's this root system of emotional wounds that are still there, buried in your subconscious and buried in your body. And I guarantee you they are there because they're there in every single client I've ever worked with.

When we get to and we get to a state of where we can bring curiosity and compassion, and we can regulate the nervous system and make it feel safe, and then we can help those wounds be healed. The whole nervous system starts to restructure itself. And it's not something that, like I do for you or you even have to do your whole system knows how to do it. Once we go there, that's a beautiful thing. Like, I'm just a coach, I'm the guide. Your system has all the wisdom inside of it and it's leading the process.

I'm just using the modalities and coaching and guiding and the miracles that, like the things that I see are just unbelievable. I had this one client the other day and she's like very type A go getter, high performer, Cheever, successful businesswoman. And she's got her third cancer diagnosis. And she watched one of my webinars and she goes, you know, I, I finally believe that this is this has got to be the missing link, this emotional wound stuff, this nervous system. But I don't meditate. I don't believe in any of this stuff.

I never, you know, I never take time to rest or take care of myself. And, you know, I don't know. But something inside of her said, yes, let's do this awaken process thing. And after six sessions, she said, I have significantly more peace that I've ever had in my life. I have almost no stress anymore. I've never been able to take time for myself and now I have that time and more. Joy, said her. She got her blood results back recently and said they're better than they've ever been. And she's just like, this was so out of the box for me.

But I realized I had to try something different.

What the Awaken Process Is and Why It Works 36:38

And one of the things that helped that was we understood what happened to her. It's seven years old, that it's seven years old. Her system believed that it had to perform. It had to achieve it, had to do these things for love and recognition. And that drove she she told me when the session she goes, I now realize why I've made every decision in my life, and it's all from being seven years old. And me. And those decisions have led to her cancer diagnosis and distress in her life, and the stress in her relationship and the stress in her nervous system.

And now, with the awareness and the tools she has the ability to regulate her own nervous system. And that's one example of hundreds of how it shows up in our lives and our body. And I can relate to her so much because I've had the same thing like this drive, like I have to perform and achieve and what's really under that? Well, actually, my nervous system seeking safety and it's looking for love. And then when we heal that underneath, it's like, I can still run a business and serve and and create things, but I don't have this drive that I have to do it or else I'm not feeling accomplished.

I can also go relax on the beach. I can take time off, I can enjoy life without it. And my system is is just as happy with or with it. And let me just pause there because I know that's a lot. Yeah. So let's review that a little bit. I always like to do a review. So blog. Right. So you know you mentioned adverse childhood experiences right. So these studies have really they've linked to that early trauma that you mentioned in this case the seven year at seven years old. Right. And that trauma itself is linked to lifelong gut dysfunction, elevated IBS rates immune dysregulation.

And then that somatic memory that you mentioned. Right. And this is how the autonomic nervous system is really coating that threat, that response that you're talking about long after whatever happened at age seven is there. And when that immune system is suppressed and that gut is imbalanced, that's where like my work comes in, I'm like, yeah, I see this in my patients. And I'm like, God, when I when I sit down and do like intakes with them, we go back to like, okay, you're five years old. What was going on, your and your teens, what was going on?

And they're like, why are you asking me? No doctors ever asked me this before because I'm like, it is all connected, right? So now you mentioned this word a few times and I feel like the audience is going, all right. Tell me, how can I feel safe if right now I am sitting and listening to this and and I just don't I don't know what I feel, but I definitely don't feel safe. Is there a like. I know it's a 12 step process, but is there a part in the process that you think that you can walk us through that could have a shift for this person just by starting it?

Yeah, we could do five minutes right now and help somebody start to feel a little bit regulated in their nervous system, which you do it. I think we all need it. Yeah. Which would be, you know, we'll use maybe 2 or 3 of the modalities. We'll keep it simple short, but at least to start to feel what that feels like inside yourself. And so if you're driving maybe pause this and come back to it. But if you're watching or listening, just find yourself sitting in your chair and feel the whole weight of your body start to relax in your chair.

If your feet are on the floor, feel your feet really pressing into the floor as if the earth is coming up beneath you to just support your whole body. Really relax your whole body into your chair or do something called orienting. So just look around your room for a moment. This is one way that helps. One simple way helps your nervous system feel safe in your space. Look at a plant or anything that's got maybe a neutral tone, something that makes you feel good or calm. Just looking at this beautiful kind of ancient.

It's like an old seashell kind of thing. Look at find something in your own space. It just makes you feel calm and relaxed. Even you can rub your hands on your legs, kind of feel your that feels good. Noticing where your body is in space is another simple nervous system technique that helps you feel safe where you are. And once you've done that, you can generally close your eyes. And let's take a deep breath in through the nose and let it out through the mouth with a sigh. Filling your shoulders.

Relax. Filling your head and neck. Relax. Feel your whole body relax. Really lean into your chair, feeling your whole body supported by your chair. We're gonna take another deep breath in through the nose. This time. Hold for a couple seconds at the top and long, slow exhale through the mouth. You can even make a side sound deep, long, slow. Excel. Start to tell your nervous system to calm down and to relax. The inhale brings energy and nutrients to the body. The exhale releases toxins and relaxes the body.

We'll take one more deep, slow breath in through the nose, feeling the belly, the chest, the throat filling all the way up. Long. Slow. Exhale out to the mouth. Yeah, we'll do a very simple breathing practice called neon, which is coherent breathing. We'll just do a few rounds again just relaxing the nervous system. I'll count for you. Breathe into the nose for a count of four. Breathe out to the nose slowly for a count of six. And let's take a transition. Breath in and let it go in. Breathing in to 34023456.

In 23402345 6 in 2 3402345 6 in 2 3402345 6 in 2 3402345 6 in 2 three four. Out 23456 into 34023456 and relax. Observing inwardly. Just notice the breath gently moving in and out to the nose on its own. Now I want you to bring a gentle attention inside your body. And just observe any sensations in your body. Without judgment. Just notice any sensations. There could be. Warmth. Or tightness. Or numbness. It could be restriction or expansion. It could be discomfort or comfort. Just notice what's going on inside your own body.

And we don't have time now, but we would look deeper into these different sensations. And within each one, there's a tremendous amount of wisdom for your own body that would guide us to what your body and mind needs to heal. But right now, we're just going to observe with curiosity any sensation. In your body. Sometimes there's some butterflies in the stomach or there's some tightness in the throat. Just notice what's going on inside your body. You might notice a lot, or you might notice a little or nothing at all.

And that's all. Okay. Then let's take a deep breath in and let it go. And you could ask internally or notice a recent experience. An emotional experience that triggered you, something that you don't want to do anymore or you would want to heal. Could bring up just 10% of that memory. We're not going to go into the whole story. Some recent emotional experience challenge or something. Maybe bothers you or you want to change. And see if you can bring that memory up gently. Maybe it's a pattern. Maybe it's people pleasing. It's stressful reactivity.

It's fear of being judged or judging others. This constant stress or some anxiety, whatever that pattern is, just see if you can bring that up gently. See if you can have some curiosity towards it, and notice what is happening in your body when you're in that emotional experience, what's happening in your body or around your body? Sometimes it's just a sense of something. And so she's just a wall around my heart. Or there's there's a sense of there's a restriction or there's tightness or there's some pain that flares out.

Just observe what's going on inside your own experience. And now we're going to let that go, and we're going to take a deep breath in. And long slow deep exhale. And see if you can just expand your awareness a little bit outside your body. Almost as if you're taking a slight step back and notice that you are the awareness that is aware of what's happening in you and around you. See, if you can notice that there's a higher awareness that holds all of these patterns. Seeing how thoughts come and go.

Emotions come and go. Sensations come and go, all like waves

A Guided Nervous System Regulation Practice 50:28

on the ocean. And see if you can sense that you are the ocean underneath. Calm, still, infinite. Able to just observe these sensations and thoughts and emotions as they rise and fall in. This is rest in that awareness for a moment, and let's take a deep breath in and let it go. The gentle smile on your face. You can gently open your eyes. How do you feel now? I feel very relaxed, like I could go to sleep. I wonder how the audience is feeling. I hope all of you guys are feeling also very good. But like this newfound sense of safety.

If that's not a word that has kind of entered your everyday life, maybe that's one you want to consider. So last question here, because I really don't want to take away from this experience. But if someone's listening right now and they're eating well, they're taking their probiotics. They're like you said, doing all the right things, but they are stressed. They're not sleeping, they're health system symptoms persist. What are the three most important things they should start doing this week? To begin regulating their nervous system and healing their body from the inside out.

And let's be concrete. Like if person sitting down making this list and they're like, all right. These are going to be my three that I'm going to do because this is the missing link for me. What would that be? First would be the awakening process. And if you don't do the awaken process then do Sky breath Sudarshan Kriya, which is a breathing and meditation practice which I do every day. Highly, highly recommend and ideally some form of gentle breathing practice, daily meditative practice and self-reflection.

Self compassionate healing practice. So these are the things that are time tested for thousands of years and backed by modern science, that people who meditate daily, live longer, have a more regulated nervous system, are significantly healthier, have a better digestive system, have reduction of cancer in every chronic disease on the planet? Think better, clearer with less stress. All really good things, right? With a simple 20 minute daily meditation practice, the science has shown this concretely.

So if you do nothing else, just start meditating daily. Secondly, what really supports that as well is a gentle breathing practice. It could be something like what we just did, some deep breathing and then some coherent breathing could be something like Sudarshan Kriya or what's called sky breath, like the sky sky breath. And that gives you a daily practice. But learning to breathe properly and to open the channels and to open the lungs into what it does, is it breath is actually the one of the fastest ways we can absolutely regulate our own nervous system.

A lot of people are breathing very shallow, not doing belly breathing. So learning how to breathe properly can change your whole life and your whole nervous system. When we're stressed, we breathe shallow, right? Just taking a few deep breaths. Notice what happened for you, the viewer and also for you. Manisha. Right. We take a few deep breaths. We do a coherent breathing. He said, oh, I feel like I go to sleep. Yeah, because our whole system calms down so quick. And then three is getting to the root of these emotional patterns.

So I just we didn't have time. Obviously, I just start to touch on semantically starting to notice there's some sensations in the body. There's actually we go much deeper in the awaken process, but we start connecting and realize the emotional experiences we have in our life are tied in semantically, and it's for different people. Sometimes it's physical. You feel it physically, other times it's a sense, other times it's a color and object. I would go much deeper and we would see what that is for you, and then we get to the underlying root cause of that emotional wounds.

So we can do all these regulation practices and meditation and, and sky breath and breathing. We can use tools. We can do yoga, gentle exercise, walking, qigong. There's so many beautiful things we can do and they all will help. But honestly, and in my own experience and the clients I work with until I healed and continue to heal those underlying emotional wounds that are from one years old, two years old, five years old, seven year old, even believe it or not, ancestral wounds that are epigenetic and we release that from the system and all of a sudden the whole system gets regulated till we get to those deeper layers.

A lot of these practices are very supportive and really help, but we very often continue to keep repeating the same patterns and behaviors. And so I would make that a top priority. Whatever you do is get to these root emotional wounds,

Three Daily Steps to Start Healing 56:38

have a daily breathing practice daily meditation practice, and then just bring more self-love and self-compassion to yourself and to these different parts of yourself. None of them are bad. None of them are wrong. Understand that all of these emotional wounds, or the behaviors that we have, or the addictions or the traumas or the emotional outbursts or the way we react, they are protective strategies that your system learn to keep you safe when you are much younger. But now they may be causing more harm than good.

And so we're not here to get rid of them. We're here to understand them with curiosity and compassion. And when we do that and help them shift into a higher role, now, you have you have these collaborators within yourself, within your own mind, that actually support your health and well-being and healing instead of, you know, what's considered a burdening your system. Does that make sense? All right. Well now. So okay, this has been eye opening the idea that what's happening in our nervous system is as powerful a force on our gut than anything.

You know, we put on our plate. It's really reframes it for people because as you mentioned missing link. Right. And that is the message I want everyone to carry with them today. So where can people find you, learn more about you, see what you're up to. Can you send us in that direction? Absolutely, yeah. Thank you. And for people interested in learning more about the awaken process, just go to the awakening process.com. You can also just go to nathancrane.com and everything's there as well. And then connect with me on social Instagram.

Wherever you're at on social connect with me there. Send me a message, say hi, tell me that you saw me on Doctor Monisha's summit, and I'd love to just hear from you and talk to you and hear any questions you have from this conversation as well. And if I can serve you in any way, I would love to. So thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me and thanks for opening this conversation. I think it's so important more now than ever. So thank you for what you're doing to bring this kind of information out to people and realize, like, this is like I tell people, this is the whole iceberg under the water.

You know, this is it. The part most people are focused on is that little tip above the water. It's like, this is where we should be focusing. So I love that you're doing that. Yeah. Perfect. All right. So audience, this is your key takeaway. Your gut is listening to your nervous system every moment of the day. That bacteria that protects your health when you are safe, connected and regulated. That is not a metaphor. It is biology. So stay tuned for another episode. Coming up next. Don't go anywhere and I will see you in the next one.