Ashok Gupta | Using Limbic Retraining To Improve Your Hormonal Poverty

Are you prepared to lose everything you've got in life? Well, Neil Donald Walsh is quoted as saying, "You'll have everything you want in life when you're prepared to lose it all." Confused by that and how it relates to your hormones and your health? You'll definitely want to stay tuned to hear Ashok Gupta tell you why.

So the big question is, how do women over 40 like us keep weight off, have great energy, balance our hormones and our moods, feel sexy and confident, and master midlife? If you're like most of us, you are not getting the answers you need and remain confused and pretty hopeless to ever feel like yourself again. As an OB-GYN, I had to discover for myself the truth about what creates a rock-solid metabolism, lasting weight loss, and supercharged energy after 40 in order to lose 100 pounds and fix my fatigue. Now I'm on a mission. This podcast is designed to share the natural tools you need for impactful results and to give you clarity on the answers to your midlife metabolism challenges. Join me for tangible natural strategies to crush the hormonal imbalances you're facing and help you get unstuck from the sidelines of life. My name is Dr. Kieran Dunston. Welcome to the Hormone Prescription podcast.

Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kieran. Thank you so much for joining me today as we talk with Ashok Gupta about limbic retraining, how it can improve the hormonal poverty that you're experiencing as a woman over 40, or maybe even sooner than that. Most women don't realize the interconnection between their nervous system and their hormonal system and also their immune system and so many other connections, which we're going to talk about in this episode. But they are intricately connected and it's affecting you whether you're aware of this or not. Ashok Gupta is— gosh, he's a lifelong learner who likes to go in depth, and his pain has become his purpose and He's been on a journey for many years since university to help himself and help others to heal the underlying root causes of many chronic diseases that come in the NICS category, which we'll talk about, that you probably have heard of, but you may not be familiar with. And they're actually related to hormonal poverty and hormone imbalance, perimenopause, menopause, PCOS, all the things that plague women or can plague women throughout the life cycle or We're going to dive into that as well. So needless to say, if you have a female body, then this applies to you, and it's something you're probably not hearing about in many places. So I hope that you will join me. And also that very quizzical Neil Donald Walsh quote, we're going to talk about that as well as some others. So I'll tell you a little bit about Ashok, and then we will get started. Ashok Gupta is an internationally renowned speaker, filmmaker, health practitioner who has dedicated his life supporting people through chronic illness and achieving their potential. He suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome around 25 years ago when he was studying at Cambridge University. And through neurological research that he conducted, he managed to get himself 100% better. He set up a clinic to treat others, and he's published the well-known Neuroplasticity Limbic Retraining Recovery Program and App, known as the Gupta Program, in 2007. He has published several medical papers. He's— undergone several randomized controlled trials around this program that he's created and published them. He's published trials on Long COVID, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, showing that the treatment is effective. He'll give us the details on that in the interview. And he's continually researching these conditions in a way that allows him to provide workable, daily use, accessible solutions to so many of us who suffer with these problems. Please help me welcome Ashok Gupta to the show.

A delight to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Yes, lovely to have you. I actually have heard about your program from some colleagues who use it with their clients, so I'm super excited to have you on. I don't think a lot of people are familiar with the topic that we're going to talk about and how really it applies to everyone. We're going to talk about specific uses and how it might apply. And really, I think in the times that we're living in with so much stress, everybody talks about, oh, you need to manage your stress, but what does that really look like on a daily basis? And also, I don't think how people get that the nervous system is really triggered or programmed to have adverse responses to stress. And what do you do about it? So we're going to dive into neuroplasticity Limbic Training Recovery, which is Ashok's program that he's developed, and even an app, I believe, which we'll get him to talk about. So what, what does that even mean, limbic retraining? Why should we care about this? Why do we need this?

Yeah, so great starting point for our conversation. Yeah, so look, when we go to a hospital, right, isn't it interesting how modern medicine separates and divides the different departments? Yeah, so in a hospital you will have a separate psychology department, a separate neurology department, a separate immunology department, And so we've got very used to this idea that there are— that the body's like a car and different things go wrong in different parts of that car and we go to the right department and the specialist who fixes that part of the car. But in the modern era, the types of diseases that people are suffering from are not hardware issues. They're not physically things wrong with the car. They're electrical issues, i.e., the nervous system, the electrical system, the information system. It's like when you go to the garage and your car has a fault, they often plug in a machine and it resets all the electrical system of the car and all the warning lights go off and the system comes back to normal. And so in a similar way, when we're talking about limbic retraining or brain retraining, what we're saying is that traditional illnesses have been more reductionist in the way that we treat them. There's something wrong over here, there's something wrong over here, something wrong in the leg, let's fix that. But modern diseases are the interconnectedness that require a more holistic response. And that comes down to the software systems, not the hardware systems. So the nervous system is like the software that's running the computer of your body, the physical hardware of your body. And that's where we often get bugs, just like in modern computers we get bugs. And so brain retraining is saying, well, let's retrain those bugs and get our system back to balance. And a lot of those bugs we believe are in the unconscious brain, in the limbic system part of the brain. And the limbic system part of our brain is the more emotional part of the brain. And once again, we go back to old medicine, as I call it, that would perceive the limbic system as purely responsible for our emotional responses, our fight or flight responses. Et cetera. But now we're discovering that the brain doesn't differentiate between an emotional response, a biological response. What these responses are, are survival responses. The brain enacts survival responses. And so when we're retraining the brain, we're not only impacting on emotional responses, but also physiological responses. And our immune response is a defensive survival response. And we've now discovered ways that we can influence that immune response and then enable the body to come back to balance. So that's along with kind of describing what we mean by brain retraining and limbic retraining.

Right. Thank you for explaining that. And if anyone's listening now and you're thinking, oh, I don't need to listen to this, it doesn't apply to me. Yes, it applies to you. It applies to every human and all mammals really on the face of this planet, particularly with the levels of stress that we're encountering. And I hope that you're clearly hearing what Ashok Gupta is saying, how this part of the brain is completely integrated with our emotional system, our nervous system, our immune system. So I think a lot of women are surprised when I teach them, for instance, in my Hormone Bliss Challenge, which is coming up soon, that how they feel, their emotions are related to their hormonal balance. And so if you have a particularly problematic emotional feelings that are coming up, depression, anxiety, that's related to your hormones through your nervous system. So exactly what we're talking about today. So if you're a woman in perimenopause, premenopause, menopause, postmenopause, and you're struggling, part of the problem that you're struggling with is not only a hormone problem, but a nervous system problem. And that's exactly what we're talking about today. So this does apply to you and It really applies. I love your analogy of the car. That's brilliant. And the electrical system, it really applies to all of us and particularly women because we are disproportionately affected by a lot of these. You talk about neuroimmune condition syndromes, NICS, which is interesting. I've never heard it called that. So can you talk about what, what are NICS, neuroimmune condition syndromes?

Yeah, so that's a label that we've given to a whole range of different diseases that we call those modern diseases. So there's neuroimmune diseases. So that means the nervous system is affected and the immune system is affected. So that's conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long COVID. And then also sensitivity reactions, so mold illness, and also related to that, Lyme, because Lyme and mold often co-occur. Then a whole bunch of pain syndromes, right? So all of these come under the banner of neuroimmune condition syndromes, where they've got commonalities between the symptomatology that is presenting itself. And if I can give an analogy of how I believe these NICSS start, because I think if we go through that, that theory, I think that would be really useful to, to frame our discussion. So these neuroimmune condition syndromes, we see, you know, I mean, we all know somebody who's got long COVID, right, who's got lingering effects of COVID It's so common in the population. Why is this happening? Well, I like to go back to first principles of us as human beings. What is the biggest question of all? Why are we here? Now, we could answer that from a philosophical perspective, and that would be a lovely conversation. But let's start with a scientific perspective. We are here because over millions of years of evolution, our bodies have adapted to our environment, learned how to survive, and pass on our genes to the next generation. So we are survival machines, and the brain's number one priority and the body's number one priority is survival. That's what can pass on those genes. Now, what's happened is that in our modern life and modern world and the way we're living our lives, those threats to survival have increased, or certainly the brain perceives them as increased. So for instance, we're more exposed to pollution, which the brain sees as a threat. We're more exposed to toxins in our food. We're more exposed to daily stresses and strains of life. And now social media means that unconsciously we compare ourselves to all the best, most amazing people in the world and compare ourselves to that top 0.1% of people out there, right? So we're setting ourselves unrealistic expectations of life. So all of these things impact on our system. So our system feels more under threat physically, emotionally, biologically, which then means that when an illness comes along, normally our bodies just fight it off and go back to standby mode. So let's say for instance mold, we have a mold exposure. Normally our brain perceives that this is dangerous, is able to create a response to deal with that mold exposure, and normally our systems will go back to balance. But I believe in a whole range of these different exposures, whether it's viruses, bacteria, mold, Lyme, the system errs on the side of caution because survival is the number one priority. So when we have exposure to that threat, the brain fights off that condition but goes into over-defense mode. That even once it's fought off the threat, it errs on the side of caution and keeps stimulating the immune system and the nervous system unnecessarily. And what that then does is completely disrupt our hormonal balance, completely disrupt our autonomic nervous system, our guts, and all of these different processes in the name of survival. And for me, this has to make sense because there's millions of people who are suffering from these conditions. Why is it so many people have a system which is malfunctioning? It is because we now live in a more threat-induced environment, which means our system is overstimulating these defensive responses. And that's why we're seeing— if you talk about emotional defensive responses, we're seeing anxiety and depression skyrocket at the moment in the population, especially since COVID And we're seeing the number of neuroimmune conditions also skyrocketing. Because of this threat system which is over-responding. And if I can give an analogy which I think many of my patients find really useful— so, Kiran, are you a fan of, I don't know, Game of Thrones, or maybe fairy tales?

I love fairy tales.

Fairy tales, there we go. So imagine that you are queen of your kingdom. So you are Queen Kiran. That's a nice ring to it, Queen Kiran. You are Queen Kiran, queen of your kingdom and your castle. And you have an army, which is your nervous system, which defends the castle. And you have your navy, which is your immune system, that also defends the castle from threats. And so when an invader comes over the hill— that could be a virus, a bacteria, gut problems, whatever it is— comes over the hill, your army and navy are able to fight off that threat effectively. But imagine there's now a drought in your kingdom. So now the kingdom is weaker. The army and navy are weaker. Because of the stress of the drought. Now an invading army comes in— could be COVID, could be more, whatever it is. Now your army and navy have to fight much harder to fight off this incoming threat because they're weaker. So it takes them a lot longer. The battle lasts a lot longer. And even once the army and navy feel they've defeated the incoming invader, they aren't sure because they think, what happens if the invader is hiding in the forest or is somewhere peripherally in the body? So they come to the weekly meeting with Queen Cirin, and they say, Queen Cirin, we're not sure if we fully fought off the invader, and the kingdom could fall. So we need all the resources now. We need all the food, the water, the wheat, the iron. Everything needs to be channeled to us. And of course, Queen Cirin, you think, that's a logical thing to do. We need to ensure survival of the kingdom. So now the army and navy are on a hair trigger. They keep firing off their weapons of war, which causes excessive inflammation in the body. Because some of those arrows start falling back into the kingdom, causing internal inflammation and challenges and hormonal imbalances as well. Because our system isn't designed to be in this overactive defensive state. Then what happens is opportunistic infections. So the spies in the kingdom start flourishing because they're not— the anti-spy, the secret service is not getting funded well. So now we get opportunistic infections, opportunistic viral infections, bacteria. Pathogens, mycotoxins, all these types of things starts flourishing in the system because the army and navy is taking up all the bandwidth of the body and is fighting its non-existent threat. As this system continues, the weaker and weaker the kingdom gets from all of this over-defensiveness, the more and more the army and navy believe we're still in danger. So they keep firing off more and more weapons of war, which gets the kingdom even weaker, and so on and so on. And that's why often we then stay in this non-homeostasis. We stay in this state of overstimulation, lack of homeostasis, autonomic dysfunction, gut dysfunction, hormonal dysfunction. All of these things are interconnected, and I believe they're all triggered by underlying reason, which is a system which is in imbalance because it's doing the thing that it thinks is best—survival. Survival is number one priority. And what brain retraining is, is realizing that A lot of these symptoms that we're experiencing, hormonal imbalance, gut, mycotoxins, these are downstream effects of an overdefensive system. So brain retraining is the next time the Army and Navy have their meeting with you, you say to them, my dear generals, the war is over. You can stand down, get back to balance, get back to standby mode. And what that does is it then means that the autonomic nervous system and the immune system start coming back to a level of homeostasis. And what we find with our patients, and we've done lots of studies which we'll talk about, then all of the downstream effects start also resolving themselves. And therefore the gut challenges, the fatigue, the health-compromising effects all start coming back to balance and people start getting better and they start recovering. So you start— you, we came to this flow of thinking from the question, what is a neuroimmune condition syndrome? So I believe neuroimmune condition syndromes covers a whole variety of these modern diseases that we haven't found a magic pill for, that doctors really don't have that they're able to support. And yes, there's lots of great work that people like yourselves are doing in terms of supplements and medications that can support healing, but we often find that as soon as one has a stress, guess what, all of the symptoms come back again, or many of the symptoms come back, and we have to find another route towards healing. And what we're saying to a lot of practitioners is the brain retraining piece, if you use that in complement with traditional avenues, it magnifies the power of healing. Because you're targeting from not only downstream but also the upstream causes as well.

Yeah, thank you for that analogy. That really helps. And I guess one other I'll offer that's coming to my mind is a friend of mine called it— it's, you know, the limbic system is your smoke alarm. And it's like all of our smoke alarms are going off even though there's no fire. There might have been a fire at one time, whether that fire was a exposure or Lyme or foods you're sensitive to, or maybe some type of childhood big T trauma or little t trauma or something. And that the smoke alarm just gets stuck in this on state that keeps our entire system in a state of hyperarousal, kind of sympathetic outflow with, with parasympathetic deprivation. And then that causes a whole host of other problems. I love it when people like you come with great analogies that really help people understand what's going on for their body, why this applies to them. We really are— we're on assault just listening to the radio or looking at the TV with everything that's going on in our modern lives. And so this applies to all of us. And I love this quote you shared with me. I had to think twice about it. I think it's brilliant. Your brain can heal your body when you get your mind out of the way.

There's a lot to unpack in that. Yeah.

Yeah. So talk a little bit about that, and then maybe we can start talking about the program that you've developed. But yeah, that's a mind-bending quote. So we are looking at 3 different components.

We're looking at the body, our physical body. We're looking at our brain, which is the physical component that houses the electrical system, or is the kind of the head of the nervous system, as it were. And then we're looking at the mind, which is our subjective experience of consciousness, of being awake, of being alive. And traditional medicine doesn't really necessarily look at the consciousness piece, right? It looks at the brain and the body in the very neutral scientific terms. But these three pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are constantly interacting and affecting each other. Every emotional condition— you call it trauma, it could be depression— has a physiological component. So we know that, for instance, 50% of depression cases involve excessive inflammation. Every emotional condition has a physical component. Every physical condition has an emotional component. Yeah, they are not separate. And therefore, often we may not realize it, but our mind and the way that we think and the way that we interact with our condition impacts on impacts on the condition itself and also impacts on how the brain can get back to homeostasis. So our program is not a psychological program. It is not CBT. But what it is, is it's saying, let's look at these three components and look at the interactions and look at how we can create the best environment for the brain to feel that we are safe and that it can switch off these overactive arousal systems so we can get our health back. Back. And a key piece of the jigsaw that relates to that quote is our past traumas. So we know that women are more likely to develop these conditions compared to men, and also that if someone has a background of, let's say, little t trauma or big T trauma, they also are 3 to 4 times more likely to get one of these types of chronic illnesses. And that's because we believe that whether it's your experience in the womb, how stressed your mother was, how stressful the birthing experience was. And then the first 5 years of life are hugely formative in terms of your sense of safety, your relational contact with your mother and father. All of those impact on your nervous system and how trigger-happy it is to threats around you based on its sense of safety. And so in a similar way, our mind impacts on our physical body because if we have never felt safe emotion in our past, Why would our body believe that we're safe physiologically? Because once again, the brain does not differentiate between the different types of threats. They're just threats that need to be mitigated. And that's our clue as to why people with trauma are more likely to have these types of conditions. And it may not even be trauma. It can just be a sense of a lack of nurture, uh, from our past. And that's where these pieces come together. So that's why I kind of created that quote to make sure that we're aware of these different components and how they interact.

I love that. That's so beautifully said and explained. I don't know that I've ever heard it more beautifully explained. If we've never felt safe emotionally, why would our body believe we are safe physiologically now? Right? The fire alarm is on. And so the program that you developed, and maybe this is a good time to ask you to share with everyone your background and how you came to develop this program, because it really helped to— I don't want to put words in your mouth, but transform and save your life. In a lot of ways, correct? Absolutely. So how did that happen?

So it was the mid-'90s, and I was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge. And I had a virus, didn't think much of it. And the virus kind of went away, but I started feeling physiologically really bad. So extreme fatigue, extreme exhaustion. I'd look at a textbook and couldn't even read it. I'd have to crawl to the bathroom sometimes because my energy was so low. And I thought, what on earth is going on here? And in my worst moments, I was, you know, almost suicidal because it's a horrible condition. You know, you just don't feel like you can do anything. And I go from doctor to doctor and they'd say, we don't know what you have, we have no explanation for it, we have no treatment for it, we don't even know really know what to call it, and you might have it for the rest of your life. And you can imagine, for a young man, that was almost a death sentence. That's like a brick wall in front of you saying, you have this disease and we don't— we can't help you. And I met hundreds of others who were also suffering from similar conditions. And that started my lifelong quest to try and understand these conditions. And I made a contract with the universe, and I said, if I can just get myself well, even if it's not fully— if I can just get myself well, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others with this condition, because there's so much untold suffering that's going on, uh, that we don't see because these conditions aren't really taken so seriously because they don't— they're not seen as increasing mortality necessarily. And And that started my lifelong quest. And so I then researched brain neurology, physiology, and I came up with a hypothesis as to what causes these conditions, which I published online in 1999 and then in Medical Hypotheses journal in 2002, and then set up a clinic to treat others. And since then, we've become an online program with an app, and we've published several medical studies and randomized controlled trials on our treatments as well. So that's been my journey. And like all of us in— or many of us in these professions. We've gone through our own challenges, our own suffering, and are looking to improve the lives of others because we found something that's helped.

Yeah, we're both here fulfilling our contracts with the universe. I have a similar contract, and I think that a lot of us who do the type of work that we do with communities and patients that are underserved by corporate medicine had a similar story of not being been helped and served by the corporate medical establishment. And so we found the answers. And so I'm so glad you're here listening, if you're listening right now. So do you want to talk a little bit about what's involved? I know that you have a free trial you're going to share with everyone, and we're, we're going to talk a little bit more about that coming up. But what kinds of activities are involved with limbic retraining? It sounds like I'm gonna have to do brain surgery.

I know somebody's thinking, "That sounds complicated." Well, I love that maybe one day science will progress and we can just flip open the head, rewire like we do in a car, fix a few wires, and then done. But unfortunately, that technology hasn't come. So until then, we are gonna have to do it manually, yeah, internally ourselves. And that involves various brain exercises. That we have. So we teach a patient to recognize these danger signals on the periphery of consciousness. Yeah. Because the brain has a safety valve. It always checks with our consciousness as to whether what it is doing is the right thing, the right defensive response. And most of us aren't aware of that day to day. But we enable people to tune into that and retrain the brain that we are not in the same state that we were at the original exposure to that threat. Life has moved on. We are now safe. And that doesn't happen the first time, the second time, the third time. You have to repeat this. That's where neuroplasticity comes in, the idea that our brain is malleable, changeable. We can rewire it towards health. And that's what we do in the Gupta Program. So we are now an app, which makes it super easy to use. And the way it works is people can come to our website or download the free app, and then— and obviously that'll be in the show links— and they can take our free trial, 28-day free trial, where they can go through the videos and audios and learn a lot more about their condition. And should they then decide to take on the full program, then that involves watching videos, weekly webinars with myself, and something that has been an absolute game changer in terms of brain retraining and nervous system regulation is something called Daily Gupta Size. Now, what— my own words there— Daily Gupta Size. We recognize that patients are often isolated. They lack motivation to put these practices in to daily routines. So we have daily Zoom calls with our trained coaches where we take people through the exercises that they need. So if you're not somebody who can follow a program and integrate it, just come online every day or whatever, whatever days you can, and we take you through everything that you need each day. So it becomes a regular part of your daily practice, and that has been a game changer for our patients. And we have like 200 to 300 people a day who come on to these Zoom calls. And it's a real sense of community and support as well. And so there's a whole package of techniques, events that people can then come to, and we hold people's hand, we would take them through, uh, the brain retraining. Yeah, so that's how it essentially works. And until we have independent Phase 3 trials— so currently we're doing Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials, we've shown great data, and I'll share some of that with you— but until we have the large-scale Phase 3 trials, we offer a 1-year money-back guarantee on the subscription. So people can use it. And after 6 months, if they— if it's not for them or they think it's working for them, they can return it, no questions asked, and get their money back and use that money for something else. So we think people have got nothing to lose by giving this, this way of doing things a go.

All right. I love that you have a name for it, Goop to Size. That's awesome. And that it's done in community, because one of the biggest stressors that we have right now in modern society is that we're so disconnected. From our families, friends, loved ones, living a lot of us in isolation and loneliness is at epidemic levels, worse on your health than smoking. And so I know with me, I do my programs with women only in groups because the connection is part of what— when we have that co-regulation with other people, we need that as humans, as Homo sapiens, and it really helps So I love that you have that. And yeah, do you wanna talk a little bit about the research that you've done? I'm really interested to hear more about that.

Yeah, definitely. Look, there can be so many things on the internet right now, on Instagram, Facebook, you're scrolling through, everyone's got some kind of healing methodology for all these different diseases. But for us, the science matters. Yeah. So therefore we spent a lot of time and effort and money on supporting research studies in this particular field. And so we published a couple of recent randomized control trials. So we did one on fibromyalgia, and we found that after 8 weeks of our program compared to a relaxation program— on our program, within 8 weeks, patients notice a 40% reduction in their fibromyalgia scores, but zero response in the control group. We halved anxiety, halved depression, halved pain, and doubled functional capacity. And that's just within 8 weeks. And these effects lingered and stayed on for 6 months— uh, or so, 5 months. So that's 3-month follow-up. So that was one study which published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, which is one of the top journals. Then recently we just did a study on Long COVID, and we found that— well, we were comparing our program to a wellness program, so it was a real proper control. That wellness program had sleep and diet and supplements and all the good things that we are told to do to keep our health at a good level. So compared our program to that equivalent structural program, and after 3 months our program was 4 times more effective at reducing fatigue and twice as effective at increasing levels of energy. And so it's quite rare in a medical study you get a 400% response compared to the, the control group. That's once again a published randomized controlled trial that people can see on our website. And then another study we just published, which wasn't an RCT but was a clinical audit of our patients, we found that across 14 different conditions— so this includes Lyme disease and POTS and chronic fatigue and Long COVID— across 14 different diseases after just 3 months on our program, people had anywhere between a 60 to 120% improvement in their symptoms. And what this showed is that this idea that one program can impact on lots of different diseases because they may have the same underlying pathology. If we target that underlying pathology, we can heal a whole host of different conditions. And that's once again a published study that people can, can take a look at on our website.

Yeah, I love that. Thank you for sharing that. It sounds like a lot of work, but also very worth it to validate this modality that has applications across disease spectrum. So for every aspect of that car that you talked about in the beginning, the, the, how the body is very mechanistically viewed in mainstream medicine, and it's really not. We are living beings. That every part affects every other part. I'm wondering, before we close, if you can talk about this Neale Donald Walsch quote that you shared with me that I love. And I'd love it if you could help everyone understand. You could talk about a little bit who Neale Donald Walsch is. He's— well, he's the writer of Conversations with God and other books. And the quote is, "You'll have everything you want in life when you are prepared to lose it all." What does that mean and how How does that apply to what we're talking about today?

It's an ancient Eastern philosophy. It comes from the ancient Vedic tradition, which is this idea that when we have an attachment to a specific result, we cause ourselves stress, right? So if we really want that job and we go to the interview, if we are really, really desperate to get that job, how are we gonna come across in the interview? We're gonna come across stressed. Less self-assured, less confident in our ability to get that job because we are coming from a place of desperation. So it's that place of where desire turns into desperation, or an intention turns into desperation. And so when we're so attached to result, fist clenched, we actually push those things, those very things that we want, we push them away from ourselves. Now, how is this relevant to healing? Sometimes when we put We put so much emphasis on our physical bodies and our physical conditions, and we're desperate to get better, and we have a hypervigilance of these disease states within us. Although it can feel like that means we're monitoring it and trying to find solutions, actually, we may push healing away from ourselves because we are in a state of desperation. And in that desperation to heal from it, we actually tense up our nervous system and push away the very thing that could heal it, which is a more relaxed, nervous system. Therefore, acceptance of our current state is the first step to healing. And that's a core part of what we do in our program as well. I love that.

Therefore, acceptance is the first step. This applies very much to women who are wanting to achieve pregnancy and having difficulty, and they don't realize that in ruminating on getting pregnant and they're not getting pregnant, I've got to get pregnant. The stress levels are going up, that they're actually negatively impacting their hormones and their nervous system, their limbic system, and they're causing it to be in a survival state that says, I'm not safe. And then you can't get pregnant in that state. So, gosh, I never heard Neil Donald Walsh apply to our health. That's brilliant. But yes, the attachment and acceptance acceptance. There's literature I love that says acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. And really, it does start with accepting it. Otherwise, a lot of the healing that we do, even from a functional perspective, is very what I've heard called transactional. I do this detox for myself and I want my body to give me X result. And it's no wonder that we go about healing that way sometimes. Because that's the kind of society that we live in. It's very much a transactional society. Relationships are transactional. I give you this money, you give me this. But our bodies are living systems that do respond to the intention with which we try to heal our bodies. So I think coming from a place of understanding that and loving ourselves. So to me, self-love is not a transactional activity. It needs to be a very holistic, nurturing, ground-up activity where our intention is to give our body everything that it needs, everything that she needs, I like to say, to heal. So I love that you put that intentionality into your Gupta Size and the Limbic Retraining program.

Yeah, absolutely. The idea of we are where we are. It's already happened. If I don't accept what has already happened within my body right now, all I'm doing is resisting, and I'm in a resistant state. And what we resist persists, that famous quote. So to get out of that resistant state and calm our nervous system, the first step is accepting whatever is so right now. And from that place of acceptance, we can then say, I now save my energy. Instead of worrying about this, I save my energy to be able to to look at solution-oriented processes and set that intention for health. And that's really how that quote comes in.

Yes, I love that our nervous system is activated when we're in that resistant state. So it starts with acceptance. I love that you're going to share a free trial with everyone. Thank you so much for that. I myself would love to try it and even would invite you to come back after I've tried and we can talk about my experience. I don't know if that would be beneficial. I'd love to, yeah.

Give you complimentary access and then we can see how you respond to it, what you think of it, and have another chat. That would be lovely. Yeah, that would be lovely.

And so tell everyone where they can connect with you online and around learning more about the program that you're offering. We will have the link in the show notes, but tell everyone how to connect with you?

Yeah, so it's simple. They can come to our website, which will be in the show notes, uh, guptaprogram.com, or they indeed can go to App Store or Play Store and just download the, the free app and straight away start retraining your brain. You can look at videos, audios, and even some of the Daily Gupta Sighs. The first part of it, the nervous system regulation, is free. It's free to anybody on the planet. It's our kind of gift back to the planet. So you can join that for free and kind of experience those first, you know, ways of looking at your nervous system. And yeah, that's how they can find out more.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Ashok, for your journey, turning your pain into your purpose, and for sharing your mission and your contract with the universe with us and with the world. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And thank you for joining me for another episode of The Hormone Prescription with Dr. Kiran. I know that you're inspired were— by what you've heard today. I think the more tools that you can have in your tool bag for your personal healing, health, and wellness to reverse hormonal poverty and get to hormonal prosperity, the better off you'll be. This is a great tool that I'm excited to share with you. So I hope that you will click the link in the show notes and download and do the free trial. And I'd love to hear about your results. Reach out to me on social media @kierandunstonmd. Thanks so much for joining me, and till next week, I'll see you for another episode. Peace, love, and hormones, y'all.