How Mindfulness Can Help Recovery From ME/CFS, Fibromyalgia, & MCS

Well, hello, and a warm, warm welcome to our Facebook Live event with myself, Ashok Gupta. I'm the founder of the Gupta Program, and I'm so glad that you're able to be with me today to join us on this webinar to learn more about the hypothesis. Also, to understand some new mindfulness tools that you can actually use for you personally, helping you recover from the particular condition that you have. Now, before we start any of our Facebook lives, we just tend to center ourselves. So if you'd like to just close your eyes and just take a slow, deep breath in with a smile and breathe out through the nose slowly. And once again, breathing in through the nose with a smile. And breathing out through the nose slowly. And just become aware of your feet. Give your toes a bit of a wiggle. Become aware of your legs. Now. Taking another slow, deep breath in to relax the muscles of your legs. Breathing in and breathing out through the nose slowly with a smile. Feeling that relief. Just becoming aware of your torso and your body. And your shoulders. Bringing your awareness to the gentle rise and fall of your chest. Feeling grateful to your lungs for all the great work that they do, And bringing your awareness to the delicate muscles of your face. And let's have one final slow, deep breath in as we relax the whole body. Breathing in with a smile and let go and just relax your whole body. Ready to take in some wonderful information today. Another slow, deep breath in and breathe out. And when you're ready, with a smile on your face, you can just gently open your eyes. Okay, so we just want to check that everyone on Facebook can actually hear me because we are having a couple of people saying that there's no sound. So if you can just confirm in the comments on Facebook that you can actually hear me, then we can obviously start. Just want to check that that's okay. So in the comments section, if you can just confirm that you can see and hear me clearly, then we can. Then we can start. The sounds working now. Okay, fantastic. That's good to know. Well, it's wonderful that so many of you could join us, and I'd love for you in the comments box on Facebook, just tell me where you are from. So where are you tuning in from? I know we've got people from all over the world, and I'm so glad that you could be with me. So I know that we've got Jess Reedy, who's one of our marketing managers, who's joining us from Australia. I know you're having to get up very early to join us, so thanks for that. And we've got a number of other people, so just let me know. Tessa from London, hello to you. Sharon from Oregon, usa. Great to see you. Lynn from Ireland, Joanne from Dublin, Julia from Germany. Okay, so a lot of people from Europe, Mimma from Italy, welcome to you. Ria from the UK And Joanne from Colorado. So wonderful. Thank you so much for saying hello. It's great to know that and get some feedback from you. So as we going through today's webinar, of course, do feel free to share the webinar on your Facebook pages, etc. Feel free to share like and comment and always like your little hearts and things traveling across the screen. So that's always nice as well. Okay, good. All right. So before we talk about mindfulness and what mindfulness actually is and how it can benefit us, what I'd like to do is briefly go through the hypothesis so that we can understand why why mindfulness can be useful for chronic conditions. So I know some of you have heard this explanation before, perhaps you've read it on the website. But what is always useful is when I go through this to really tune in with the hypothesis. And sometimes we need to hear it many times before we get comfortable with it. And it really feels right to us personally. So I know some of you have the Gupta program, but most of you are completely new to the Gupta program and wanting to find out perhaps some more tools and techniques that you can help you personally with your condition. Now, a bit of background to myself. So for those of you who don't know, I suffered from ME chronic fatigue syndrome many years ago when I was at university. And that began a kind of lifelong quest for me to understand more about the condition, what causes it, and how I can help myself and other people get better. So I did a lot of research into the brain neurology of emotion and using ad hoc techniques and trying to retrain my brain, eventually I managed to get myself 100% better. I then published a few medical papers on what I believed caused the condition and then set up a clinic to help and support others. So it's been a real journey and a fun journey at that. And in 2007 we published a home study course so people from around the world could benefit from the treatment. And we've also done a few small scale pilot studies which I'll talk about a bit later. And I do feel it's quite difficult for practitioners who haven't really been through the condition themselves to really understand what it feels like. So I hope that I'M able to share some insights and you're able to connect with what I'm saying and how it truly feels. It is a kind of condition which you intuitively understand what's going on rather than someone telling what's going on. It's really a personal journey, as it were. Okay, so I'm going to briefly go through the hypothesis and I guess the starting point always with this is why are we here? You know, the biggest question of all, why are we here? And we're here because, depending on what you believe, over millions of years of evolution, nervous system and our immune system and all the other protective systems in the body, they become fine tuned to handle our environment to ensure survival. So essentially we are survival machines and the number one priority for the body and the nervous system, and obviously the head of the nervous system is the brain. The number one priority is to ensure survival, to ensure that we can cope with our environment and pass on our genes to the next generation. And a little clue as to what might be going on in these conditions. These defensive responses or survival responses can sometimes get tricked into being turned on and not being turned off. And that's an initial cue, an initial clue to what might be happening in these particular conditions. So I'm just going to bring up a slide now which begins to explore and explain a bit about the hypothesis and what I believe is actually occurring in these conditions. So just to give you an idea of what we're going to be covering today, so I'm going to briefly cover the hypothesis, then I'll be understood, Then we'll be looking at mindfulness. And what is mindfulness? You know, I'm sure you've heard many different ideas from many different people, but I want to really boil it down to the essential nature of what mindfulness is about and how we can incorporate it. And then I'll share a couple of tools that we can begin to use on our healing journey. So the two brain structures that I believe are probably involved in this condition, although there are many different brain structures, is the amygdala and the insula. So the amygdala, there's two of them, two tiny almond shaped structures behind our eyes, and then the insula, which is a brain structure that sits between the kind of midbrain, the limbic system and the cortex. And the amygdala's role is to protect us from danger. And the insula's role is to take in all incoming information from the body and to maintain homeostasis, to monitor what's going on in the internal environment, and also to stimulate the nervous system and various other hormonal systems as well, depending on what the nature of the emergency might be. And the insula, we also know, is involved in immune system conditioning as well, But I'll talk about that later. So the brain is essentially a survival machine. We are survival experts. And I don't know if you remember when you first got the condition. Most people remember a pretty stressful period in their lives. And this is a story I hear again and again, whether it be me. And chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, mcs, multiple chemical sensitivities, electrical sensitivities, irritable bowel syndrome. All of these conditions tend to start in someone's life when they're going through particular period of stress. And it might be a chronic period of stress or acute stress. Often people have had a difficult time for maybe six months to a year in the run up to the condition. So this gives us a clue as to what might be going on. Now, let me take the example of flu, because that's the simplest example. We've all experienced flu. You were lucky if you have never had flu. And flu is something which is life threatening to the body. And many people each year actually die from flu. The elderly, people with weakened immune systems, and so often people with me and chronic fatigue syndrome, describe a flu like illness at the beginning of the condition. In fact, around 70% of people recall a specific illness. And when our immune system is low because of the excess stress that we're experiencing, the immune system can't fight off that particular flu virus effectively. So it takes a lot longer to fight off the flu. And because we might be getting stressed, overworking, perhaps other things going on in our lives right then and there, we may not dedicate the time required to relax our body and to make sure that we recover from the condition. So the brain can go into an altered state and begin to worry that our survival is under threat because we don't seem to be able to fight off this particular virus. And it begins to notice symptoms in the body. And those symptoms in the body, it now seems to feel are also a threat to survival. And so a particular conditioning occurs in the brain, where not only is the brain now defending against the flu, it also seems to defend against the very symptoms in the body which now remind it of having the flu. Because in conditioning, or when the brain learns new habits, it learns to defend against the actual threat. But anything similar to the threat as well, or anything that was present at the same time as A threat. So let's say a rabbit runs into a field and sees a fox. And if at the same time that particular field had a lot of apple trees in it. Let's take a silly example. Let's say that field had a lot of apple trees in it, then that rabbit, if its life was in danger as soon as it went into that field with apple trees and the fox was chasing, may have just survived. And its brain now gets conditioned or gets into that habit to think, right. Every time I go into a field with apple trees, I better watch out, because there's more likely to be foxes there. Now, logically, that may not be true. But as far as the rabbit's nervous system is concerned to ensure survival, it errs on the side of caution. It makes sure that we're in a position to survive. And in the same way our brains may have learned that the very symptoms in our bodies that we're experiencing and the fact that we don't seem to be getting better is evidence that there is something wrong with the body, that flu virus is still here, or something else is still causing us pain. Therefore, we must overstimulate the defensive systems of the body. Let me explain this in a short diagram here. So at the beginning of the condition, there tends to be three factors that cause me cfs, fibromyalgia and similar conditions. Number one, we have some predisposing factors. So these might be genetic factors or upbringing. And number two, we may be experiencing some kind of acute or chronic stress combined with that physical trigger, a virus or bacteria. In the case of fibromyalgia, it might be an accident or pain syndrome. In the case of chemical sensitivities, it might be exposure to a particular environmental toxin or mould. And all of these things come together to then cause a conditioning effect in the amygdala and the insula. And we know from animal studies that when they work on rats, the conditioning in the immune system tends to occur in the insula. So we have lots of evidence to support the insula's involvement in this and in ME chronic fatigue syndrome, as well as fibromyalgia. We also know that there are lots of abnormalities in the functioning of the insula. That it seems to be overreacting, that it seems to default to the right insula, which causes a lot of overstimulation of the nervous system because it becomes overwhelmed with signals from the body. And on the right hand side of this diagram, and by the way, if you're not sure about this whole explanation, it is fully explained on the research page of our website. So you can always go to the research page and actually just check that everything's okay for you there. Okay, good. And coming back to this diagram. So on the right hand side we see that the nervous system chronically arouses the sympathetic aspect of itself. The sympathetic, meaning the stress system, the cortisol, adrenaline, noradrenaline, gets overstimulated in the body. There's also immune dysfunction because the immune system is now being triggered unnecessarily. But when we trigger the immune system unnecessarily, eventually it also becomes exhausted and can no longer provide the function that it's supposed to be designed for. Which is why we often get opportunistic viruses and infections in the body. We get abnormalities in the hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenal axis that controls the adrenal glands, which is often why people complain of adrenal fatigue, etc. And that number five then causes the symptoms at number six, which I don't need to go through muscle dysfunction and pain, difficulties, thinking, sleep problems. Why would your body let you sleep when it's in emergency mode, in hyper defense survival mode. And then we get secondary illness cycles such as the adrenal exhaustion dysfunction, the mitochondria, which can no longer give you the energy that you desire. Because of the overstimulation, we get a lot of inflammation in the body. So because of the overstimulation of the immune system, we find that there's inflammation in the body, especially in fibromyalgia, in the localized joints. And we also know that there's excess brain inflammation as well. Some viruses and bacteria infections may get reactivated and we may have allergies and sensitivities that start coming out of nowhere. We know that the vagus nerve, which controls the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, we know that that gets out of balance and goes into sympathetic overdrive as well. So the whole system suddenly gets stuck in this over hyper stimulated state, causing the symptoms. And those symptoms at number six double back into the brain. So the amygdala and the insulae syntax, those signals of overwhelming magnification of the symptoms in the body, now gets fed into the amygdala and insula. But they no longer have the processing power to decide what the appropriate response is. They've now got conditions to respond instantly, which is to overstimulate the sympathetic nervous system, also the immune system. And as you can see, that then at number nine doubles back into overstimulation of defense responses which causes the symptoms at number six and number seven, which then causes the brain to detect. And we get corpse in this vicious. The input and the output. An illness that has challenged our survival. It's like a physiological type of PTSD where the brain gets stuck in an over defensive cycle. But it's not a psychological condition, it's a physiological embedded survival response. And so of course I don't believe I need to say this. This is a real physical condition with real physical symptoms. It is not in the mind, but it is in the brain, I believe, which is the head of the nervous system. And the good news is that I believe this is a software problem, not a hardware problem. So what that means is I believe that the physical body is okay and can go back to its normal state. It's just the software is overstimulating the physical software unnecessarily. And if you have this condition, you may also notice that when it comes to external stress, we feel more external stress in terms of it's easier to overstimulate ourselves to feel that we can't handle any more stress in our lives. So that's why on the arrow on the right hand side you can see we have external stress that also becomes difficult to deal with. So this is a brief explanation of how this overstimulation is occurring in our bodies. If you want more information you can of course go to our website@guptoprogram.com research and there you will see a step by step explanation of what causes this condition. And on our Facebook page, on this page that you're looking at now, there is also a video in the timeline which goes through an explanation. So if you click on videos you'll see there is a video on the explanation of the hypothesis. So just briefly wanted to talk about that and we're going to have a session on questions at the end. So if you leave your questions for the end, that will make sure I can answer them all in one go. Okay, Good. So what does this mean for you? If our systems are being overstimulated, it's all happening unconsciously, without our conscious involvement. And that's why it's not in the mind, because it was in the mind. It would be saying that we somehow are causing our condition. But once this system is set up, it operates perfectly, automatically, unconsciously. We're not to blame for our condition. Yeah, and no matter, of course positive thinking and positive perspectives can help. But it is not just about positive thinking that somehow that's easy to snap out of it. So please have almost pity and sympathy for those doctors around you or people around you who don't understand the condition and seem to think that you can somehow will yourself out of it. It doesn't work like that, but. And here at the Gupta Program, we have a whole program retraining the brain out of these unconscious responses. Because normally it's out of our control. But there are some specific processes that can bring the system or certainly influence the system, and that's what we use in the Gupta program. And one of our supporting tools is mindfulness. And today what I'd like to do is to share some ideas about how mindfulness supports us. Now, why does mindfulness support us help with this condition? Because if we are also anxious about the condition, then all we do is add fuel to the fire. So it's like the body and the brain are already responding to each other. So the brain thinks we're in danger and overstimulates the body, creating symptoms in the body. And those symptoms double back and stimulate the brain that thinks we're in danger. So both of these aspects of the body, sorry, the brain up here and the body down here, they're constantly interacting and causing that vicious cycle. If we allow ourselves to get anxious and upset and annoyed and resist what we're experiencing, then we simply add fuel to the fire and create even more stimulation of our nervous system. So in any condition, but especially me, cfs, fibromyalgia, mcs, electrical sensitivities, irritable bowel, chronic unexplained pain, syndromes, in all of these conditions, actually, mindfulness can be a very positive way of supporting our healing and recovery. But of course, once again, it's not saying it's in the mind. This is just a supporting technique and just some interesting research that I'll share with you. So there is some research from the University of Liverpool on anxiety and depression in combination with the BBC that said that actually the biggest predictor of common mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, is dwelling on negative thoughts. So it's not what happened into your life, were you abused, were you bullied, et cetera. It's not so much the life events that we went through or what we've just experienced, but actually how much do we dwell on those experiences and have negative thoughts about them? That takes up our mind space. And then secondly, self blame. And this explains why mindfulness and meditation can be so effective in helping us deal with our minds. And another study, which I think is a landmark study that should have Made front page news everywhere around because it's such a powerful study. This was a study done by Harvard which showed that when people actually learnt meditation, there was almost a halving of their use of healthcare facilities. Now think about that. So they follow 5,000 people and saw how much they used a doctor or a hospital or health facility, then taught the meditation and some basic resilience training. But essentially it was more about the relaxation response through meditation and then followed them for a year afterwards and they found a 43% reduction in the use of healthcare. Now that is just, to me, an incredible study. And if that was a magical pill, that would be the biggest find of the 21st century. So the proof is there that mindfulness and meditation and all of these tools can help us with anxiety and depression or our general mood, but also have a massive effect on our physical health. And just imagine how much we can help the already strained health services around the world if we were to introduce meditation as an option for people. And I believe in 10 or 20 years time we'll look back on this era and think, gosh, how funny that we didn't introduce meditation straight away when we had all the research and evidence there for us. So in 10, 20 years time, believe meditation will be an embedded part of all healthcare systems around the world. And if you want to be part of that, I'm actually supporting some projects where we want to bring in meditation and an app that I've developed into healthcare services in different health sectors around the world. So if you're interested in getting involved, please do email our clinic. Good. So we have the evidence behind us. So this is just to satisfy our rational thinking mind and meditation. Mindfulness has so many positive effects on the body, such as helping us with cardiovascular disease, reducing levels of stress, reducing blood pressure. That so many people have blood pressure problems these days because of stress and salt intake boosts the immune system and improves overall any stress related disorder that we might be experiencing. So let's just take a step back and think about what our mind actually is. So right now I'd like you just to close your eyes. And now just open your eyes. Okay, so in that moment that I asked you to just close your eyes, close our eyes for about 20 seconds or so. What did you notice was happening in your mind there? What did you experience? What kinds of thoughts came up in your mind? So maybe you were thinking, why did he tell us to close our eyes? And then he's not saying anything. Maybe the sound stopped on my computer. Or maybe you were thinking, I Wonder what I'm going to have for dinner tonight. I know it's dinner time for some of us in UK and Europe. So all kinds of random thoughts came into our mind, didn't they? Okay, so now this time we're going to repeat the exercise. I'm going to ask you to close your eyes, but this time I'm going to ask you to think about what you're thinking about. So I'd like you to remember what it is that went through your mind. Okay? So let's close our eyes and let's become aware of the kinds of thoughts that come up in our minds. Okay, now we can just open our eyes. So what did you experience there? I'm sure that that was a different experience, wasn't it? Because we're watching what kinds of thought come up in your mind? You are thinking about what you're thinking about. And sometimes we get less thoughts because it's like once we put a spotlight on our minds, it knows that it's being watched. So we're no longer under the unconscious control of our minds. Different experience, isn't it? So I want to use a very simple analogy here. Imagine that mind is like your hand, okay? So I want you to hold your hand up like this and wave to me. Well, see you. But I'm going to wave to you. And imagine that your whole hand represents your mind. Okay? So this is your mind. And normally your mind is constantly busy. A constant flow of thoughts and emotions. And what is the mind doing? Well, the mind is constantly going into the past and the future. Judging, assessing, thinking, worrying. And we tend to go into the future worrying about the future, fearful about the future, having expectations about what's going to happen. Yeah, and generally it's a nerve. It's like nervousness about what may happen. And in the past, the mind jumps into the past and regrets what happened or feels angry or wishes things could have been different in the past. So our mind is a constant flow of thoughts. Now we tend to identify with it. So imagine that the thumb represents what we identify with and the thumb gets controlled by all of these different thoughts. We act unconsciously. So let's say someone's just called us stupid and now the mind goes into a frenzy. How dare they call me stupid. I can't believe that they did that. And that person has called you stupid once. But now we are thinking about it again and again and again and again. We can't get it out of our minds. So now that person is called us stupid a hundred times because we're Reliving it again and again and again. And what would happen if we suddenly realized that we're not our minds. Or we can certainly not identify with our minds. But we can become the observer of our minds. So the thoughts are moving along as they are normally a busy mind. But suddenly we now identify with being the observer. Who is still part of the overall identity of who we are. But is now able to observe what's going on in the mind. And this may be the intellect initially. But it could also just be the part of us that we call our observer consciousness. Or witnessing awareness. So there's all this activity in the mind and where the thumb just observing what's going on. And in a nutshell, that's what mindfulness is about. That instead of identifying with all our thoughts and worries and cares. Which is about the past or the future. We take a step back and we become the observer in the present moment. And we observe what's going on in our minds without judgment. A peaceful curiosity about what our mind is doing. And I want you now to think about this. That even once we're off this webinar. Whenever you're feeling worried or frustrated. Just bring your hand out and think, okay, this is my mind. This is what I'm worrying about. Let me label it. When I'm worrying about this and I'm worrying about that. I'm thinking about this, and I'm regretting this. But I'm over here. I'm the observer of what's going on in my mind. And when we become mindful in the present moment. We identify with the observer. And then we get lost in unconsciousness, unconsciousness again. So we. And something else happens in our lives. And we get taken over by our minds again. We get lost in unconscious. We lost awareness of the present moment. And then a mindfulness technique or a meditative technique. Suddenly helps bring us into the present moment. And not identify with our minds anymore. And we can observe what is going on our minds. From a place of stillness and witnessing awareness. And when we do this, then our minds naturally calm down. So when we're in a more mindful position. The rest of these other thoughts, worries and cares begin to slow down. Because we're no longer adding fuel to the fire. By worrying about what we're worrying about. Or being anxious about how we're experiencing and feeling things. Normally, when a thought comes along, we do one of two things. We either identify with it. So we've got lost in it and we've lost in our own consciousness. Or we completely Ignore it and repress it. We repress and push away that feeling or that thought and say, oh, I don't want to think that. I want to feel that. Let me push it away. And in both of those cases, we're adding to the pressure cooker. So imagine the mind's like a pressure cooker and we're cooking some nice stew or some nice dal, lots of creative juices inside that nice little pressure cooker. It's sizzling away, everything's fine. Suddenly we have lots of thoughts and emotions. Suddenly we're putting all that pressure into the pressure cooker. And if we push down our emotions and feelings and thoughts, we add more pressure. If we identify with those thoughts and worries, we also add more pressure. Being in the mindful state and observing what's going on is gently pulling up the valve and allowing the pressure to gently release from the pressure cooker. So that's what we want to do. So just looking at this in a visual form, better share my screen with you again. So the mind is busy with thoughts and emotions about the past and the future, like a child on a rocking horse. And we have the these negative thoughts, well, let's skip that. We identify or repress those thoughts which make us unhappy, just like the steam that gets trapped in that particular pressure cooker. And instead we want to disidentify in the present moment and observe what's going on in our mind. And that's the basis of mindfulness. And mindfulness is both the means and the end. So in the means we say that mindfulness is, is a set of tools that enables us to be more mindful. And as we practice these tools, eventually we permanently, or a lot of the time, we identify more with the witnessing awareness. So let's be mindful. Thumbs up. That's a simple way, a simple analogy to remind us. So how do we achieve mindfulness? I love that title, achieve mindfulness. Mindfulness is about being in the present moment, but achievement and expectations is always about the future. It's throwing us back into the future here. So I just use that for that title as a bit of irony. One thing that can support us and help us is of course to become more aware of the kinds of thoughts and emotions that are going on in our minds. And what kinds of resistances do we have? So for instance, if we're experiencing a chronic condition, do we notice a resistance to what is so right now? Are we not accepting the condition? So the first port of call for mindfulness is as we become the observer is accepting what's going on in our bodies, accepting the condition, not being resistant to what is going on. And often we feel a victim of the condition. We feel it's unfair, we wish that it would go away. We get annoyed at people around us for, you know, not understanding the condition, especially doctors or our friends and family. So something that I'd like you to do, to think about and reflect on at the end of today's webinar is number one, to write down what resistances do you have to having this condition? Because look, it's here, you have the condition. It's about deeply accepting it first. And once we accept it, then we feel stronger and we're more able to do something about it. So every healing strategy starts with deep acceptance of this present moment and what's going on in our bodies. So the end of today's session, I'd love you to write down what resistances do you have to what's going on? Yeah, and it might be those little voices in your head, the little thoughts, oh, I wish this would go away. I feel a victim of this. Why has this happened? It's not fair. Etc, Etc, all those kinds of things. There's resistances and secondly, beliefs. So what kind of beliefs do we have about the chronic condition we're experiencing? You know, the number one belief is this is never going to go away, going to have this forever. This is happening because there's a virus in my body and there's nothing I can do about it. All of these fearful beliefs come up and we may not believe them, but we experience them as real. So the second thing I'd like you to do at the end today's webinar, is to write down what kinds of beliefs have you got about the condition, about your healing, about getting better? And being aware of those beliefs helps you become more mindful. Because now at home, when those thoughts and beliefs and resistances are operating in your mind, you're normally overtaken by them. But mindfully, you can take a step back, observe those resistances, that feeling a victim of this condition, feeling that there's no way out, I'm going to have this forever. But you can observe them and not identify with them. That brings them into perspective, gives you insight. So mindfulness is about bringing your mind to the present moment as step one. And when we're in the present moment, we're calmer, we're happier, we're more peaceful, and we go into the observer state. So that's one benefit of mindfulness. But the second benefit of mindfulness is it brings insight because instead of being overwhelmed with our thoughts and worries, we now are the observer and we're able to now correct what's going on. And that's where the second step of brain retraining comes in. So the Gupta program, the whole treatment for these conditions is about creating a more mindful state of awareness and then from that place, being able to retrain the brain. Because if we're lost in unconsciousness, it's very difficult to retrain the brain. So for you, I'd like to take, like, for you to take away some tools. So how can we achieve mindfulness? Well, number one, daily meditation. And I know lots of people who think meditation is a great idea, but then don't actually meditate. And I would say if you've never meditated before, then start off perhaps with 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the evening, building up to 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening. And meditation has been shown to radically reduce the sensations of pain, to boost the immune system. It helps healing in all different types of conditions. So I really encourage you to take up a program of meditation. And if you're not sure, we have a meditation app called the Meaning of Life Experiment, which I'll share on a different slide. And that's a app that you can use that has got lots of 10 and 20 minute meditations to support you in that. And it's not for profit, so it's completely free. The second way that we can develop a more mindful state of mind is what I call general mindfulness is reminders. So every 20 or 30 minutes or every hour, can we remind ourselves to be more mindful to simply, well, let's do it together. So imagine a little beep goes off on your phone to remind you. We close our eyes, we take a slow, deep breath in, and we breathe out. We can all stretch and yawn. So recent neuroscience research showing that when we yawn, when we stretch. So just do a big yawn and stretch. It actually helps stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our relaxation response. So don't stifle a yawn. It's always good to allow yourself to yawn and stretch. And then with your eyes closed, you just spend 10 seconds or so just breathing slowly and deeply, bringing your mind and your presence into the present moment. So let's breathe slowly and deeply in and out through the nose, allowing the out breath to be longer than the in breath. Let's take a slow, deep breath in. Can you remind yourself every day of how your hands, which is always in front of you, can remind you to be mindful. You can label. Right? I've just had some negative thoughts. Well, I had this negative thought and I thought about this. And a resistance and a belief and an emotion. You can see how this analogy can help you label what's going on in your mind. And the third way that we can develop mindfulness is what I call activity mindfulness. So when we are walking, when we're eating, there are things that can bring us into this present moment. Normally, when we're eating food or walking, our mind isn't in the present moment, it's thinking about what's going to happen next and what happened in the past and what am I going to have for dinner and that person I'm going to meet, I wonder what they're going to say. We're constantly planning and scheming, but the sensations, the inputs from our senses can help bring us into the present moment. Moment. So if you are having dinner, are you truly tasting the food? If you're walking, are you noticing the trees and the birds singing and the shape that the branches make? And although we're not used to doing this, when we do that, we become into the present moment and we experience a deeper sense of pleasure, a more mindful pleasure, rather than things we normally derive pleasure from which are normally busy and adrenaline fueled. Secondly, when we become aware of our breath, it brings us into the present moment, so we breathe more consciously. As we do an activity, we'll notice that we feel calmer. And thirdly, a technique that I've developed, the slow motion technique, and that brings all of these things together. Whenever we're doing an activity, if we decide to do it 20 or 30% slower, speaking slower, moving slower, walking slower, we'll notice that it naturally brings us into the present moment because we're more aware. To consciously do things slower means we're bringing our mind into the present moment. And so we breathe slower and we notice naturally more of the sensations around us. So the slow motion technique is a brilliant way of bringing yourself into the present moment and having insights into what's going on in your mind. And it's something that I'd like you to practice now, because there's no point going through the theory, I'd like you to spend a couple of moments getting yourself a drink. So perhaps a glass of water or herbal tea. And as you do it, I'd like you to practice doing it slower. And how when you consciously do things slower, you notice your breathing and you Notice more of the sensations. So how your feet feel on the floor as you walk, how the cup feels as you fill it with water, and how as you drink the water, you notice the sensations of the water in your mouth and how you gulp it down and how that feels. So let's spend a couple of moments just experiencing that, doing everything slower. So I'd like you to go and do that now. So let's spend a couple of moments just making ourselves a drink. Let's do that now. Okay, good. So how did that feel for you? You were making that drink. Did you notice the sensations? The breath? How did it feel doing it slower? Well, I'm going to. In our next session, we're going to do a Q and A. So I just want to wrap up this particular part of our webinar. So by doing things slowly, becoming more aware of the sensations and breathing slower, we enable our whole system to begin to slow down and calm down, which supports our healing and supports the stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system, which means we boost our immune system and more likely to heal from so many different chronic conditions. And just something else I'd like to add. When we're. When we are noticing that our mind is very busy, what can we do? So, of course, we practice daily meditation. Perhaps yawn and stretch and take a deep breath in. But what happens if we just want to become more aware of a specific negative thought that's going on in our mind and how we can calm it down? Well, there's a little technique that I'd like to leave you with. The ABC technique. Accept, breathe, and see things differently. So what that means is when you notice yourself caught up in the thoughts and worries, your identification is with your mind. You're completely absorbed and lost in your mind might be a worry or anger or negativity or frustration at being ill or just feeling really upset about being ill. We take in a slow, deep breath with acceptance. So we take a deep breath in, which brings us to the thumb. And as we breathe out, we accept. So we deeply accept ourselves and we accept this present moment. We accept the other person and we accept everything. So it's a deep process of acceptance. And with the breath, it enables us to bring us back into the present moment. Moment. The C is, how can we see things differently? So all of our lives, we have a certain way of automatically reacting. That's where we've lost that mindful insight. We're just on automatic pilot, reacting from the past, our automatic reactions. We see the world through colored glasses. And actually when we see things differently, when we remove our glasses and say, okay, I've accepted that person, I've accepted the present moment. I'm breathing in this present moment and just being in this present moment, now that I've opened up this window of acceptance, how could I see things differently? How could I have a new perspective on this situation or this person? How could I have a new perspective on my illness? Perhaps I could think, well, actually I'm working on a new program now and I'm on the road to recovery. Or maybe I can shift my perspective and see things differently, that many other people have recovered. And I'm sure I can recover too. Because as bad as this condition makes you feel, just know that there is a way through so many people heal and get better. And you can do it too. And when our serotonin and dopamine and all those good, feel good chemicals are lowered in our brains because of this condition, it can make us feel despondent, dejected. But just know that you have that human spirit within you to be able to overcome these negative thoughts in the mind, be the witnessing awareness and have insights what's going on and see things differently. That is the beginning, just the very first step of brain retraining. So when you're at home and you're having these negative thoughts, we've gone through the tools of slowing down, meditating regularly. And now here is the ABC technique to just when you have noticed yourself with a busy mind, deep breath in, breathe out, lower the resistance in your body. Accept the condition right now. Accept how it feels in your body, accept that it's here and be okay with that, be at peace with that. And then from that place of acceptance and peace with the condition, how can you see things differently? And this is so powerful because it will just open a little window of insight into your healing and recovery. Now, as we finish off now, I've got a little friend of mine who's going to embed this idea of ABC into your mind to enable you to remind yourself to do the ABC when you're at home. Okay, so here's my friend who's going to remind you to do the abc. Just give me one second. Okay, so thank you to Michael for reminding us of abc. So that's one of my favorite tracks. So when we're at home, we can remind ourselves if we want to have insight to what's going on our minds, simple as abc, a deep breath in with acceptance of what's going on in our body, being at peace in this present moment and then thinking, how can we see things differently? How can we take a new perspective? And we'll find that so powerful. The way of reducing our resistance and our anxiety is to say, I hope you can practice some of these tools. So what have we learned today? So what we've learned is that the mind is very busy. Yeah, let me just bring up those slides again. So we've learned that the mind is very busy with thoughts about the past and the future. And we identify or repress them, which makes us unhappy. Being mindful, we become the observer of our thoughts and label them, which then makes us happier and more peaceful. And we can become more mindful through regular meditation, becoming aware of the sensations of this present moment, Becoming more conscious of our breathing and of course, the slow motion instead of the fingers. Mindfulness brings insight and healing into what's going on in our minds. So I hope you've enjoyed the Gupta program retraining the brain, relaxing the nervous system and re engaging with joy. That's the three Rs of the Gupta program. And that's how a dove flies. How can a dove fly? Needs to have two balancing wings and heading in a direction. So the brain retraining is the main part of the Gupta program that helps people with these conditions. Relaxing the nervous system supports that through meditation and little mindfulness tools that we've talked about today. And we talk very holistically in the Gupta program. So we talk about diet and pacing and levels of activity and how we can have better sleep at night, all to support healing as well as understanding how we re engage with joy so that our brain has new things to actually engage itself. That's the three hours of the Gupta program. And we have a new three month coaching series with myself where I present every week on a new topic. And it's a whole integrated three month program of recovery together with a home study course. And that starts next Monday and for the next few days. Thank you for watching today's webinar that if you'd like to join. And so if you go onto our website, guptoprogram.com and as you go through the process of buying our package, if you put in the discount code 10 discount, then until the 5th of February, you'll get a 10% discount on the Gupta program on the whole package, which as I said includes a home study with myself, a whole integrated program of recovery. On our website you can learn more about our recovery rates. We generally find that two thirds of our 60 to 70% of people who use the Gupta Program who continue with it get to 80 to 100% recovery. And we're looking for funding for a large scale trial at the moment as well to really show the effectiveness of this treatment program. So if you'll join me for our series starts next Monday. Okay, so just coming back. To myself here, book live for the Q and A because obviously I'm going to start a new webinar in the timeline of the Gupta Program page that you're already on at the moment. So what I want to say is thank you for watching, good luck with your recovery and I hope you get to use some of the mindful tools that we've spoken about. You can download the free not for Profit app at www.themeaningoflife.tbooklive for the Q and A because obviously I'm going to start a new webinar in the timeline of the Gupta Program page that you're already on at the moment. So what I want to say is thank you for watching, good luck with your recovery and I hope you get to use some of the mindful tools that we've spoken about. You can download the free not for Profit app at www.themeaningoflife.tv and that's where you can then experience all the 10 and 20 minutes meditations. So I'm going to be back on another Facebook Live on the Gupta Program page in just a couple of minutes. So I hope you join me for a live Q and A then. Thank you and goodbye.