Is Brain Retraining Just Nervous System Regulation? Live Event with Ashok Gupta

Hello everybody and a warm welcome to our live event today with myself, Ashok Gupta, where we're going to be discussing a really important topic, which is what is the difference between nervous system regulation and brain retraining? Now, often the two get talked about in the same breath. They're often equated. And yet what we want to really understand is what is the difference between these two concepts. How do they fit together? Because ultimately we don't care whether we are engaging in nervous system regulation or brain retraining. We want to understand, are we going to feel better? That's why we are engaging in these practices. And therefore, whether it's a chronic inflammatory condition that you might be suffering from, like ME or chronic fatigue syndrome or long COVID, perhaps it's a sensitivity reaction like mold or food sensitivities. Environmental sensitivities. Perhaps it's a pain disorder that you have, or you've got something more related to mental health, such as anxiety or panic or burnout, which a lot of people are experiencing in the modern population. Whatever it is, we're often prescribed this idea of nervous system regulation, and there's a separate concept of, of brain retraining. And today we're going to dispel the myths about these two concepts and really bring them together into a holistic model of how you can heal from a chronic condition that you may be experiencing. So why did we decide to have this event? Because many people are coming to us saying, well, I'm doing vagus nerve exercises. How do you have vagus nerve exercises? I'm doing somatic work. Yeah, I'm doing regulation practices right now. And yet they may be engaging in those practices, which definitely are very important and improve a particular person's condition. But many people still feel stuck despite engaging with those practices. So what's, what's really happening here? So today what we're going to do is we're going to be talking about, once again, the neuroscience behind nervous system regulation and brain retraining, what the commonalities are and what the differences are. And we're also going to have a patient interview with someone reflecting on their recovery and how they see these two concepts. And at the end, we're going to really talk about how this can benefit you and your condition, and we're going to talk about how we want to make the program more accessible to you. So many people have said that they find sometimes the upfront payments for a retraining program is too much, so we've decided— we've been listening— and we want to offer a way that you can engage in the program in an installment plan. So it's not a big upfront payment, but it makes it easier and more accessible for everyone. So we'll talk about that towards the end of today's session. And of course, we'd love for you to like today's session. Please send us a like. Please share it on your social media. Perhaps share it with other people on— in Facebook groups, because the concepts we're going to be talking about, the neuroscience behind this, is something that I've spent the last 25 years researching and trying to understand and get my head around these specific types of concepts. And we've now published 7 clinical studies on this topic as well. So this is something where I really want to share what we've learned so it can make an impact on you and the wider public. Now, I want to start off with this important point that nervous system regulation is incredibly important and is like the starting point. And in our program, we talk about this idea of the 3 Rs of recovery. The first R is regulating the nervous system. That is the foundational basis. And there we use obviously what some people call vagus nerve techniques, breathing techniques, meditation techniques. And we do a lot of deep somatic type practices as well, which are very powerful at helping regulate the nervous system, helping it feel safer. So that's the first R. And the second R of recovery is then the retraining of the brain. And the third R, we talk about re-engaging with joy. And what that means is for a person to understand at a deeper level their stress patterns, because we don't just want someone to get well, we want them to stay well. And therefore, learning about their own stress patterns, their parts, how they respond to their environment, and how they can connect with that inner stillness and joy for the rest of their lives is an important part of remaining well. Okay, so that's what we use. We use the dove analogy, that a dove needs 3 things to fly: 2 wings, the regulation of the nervous system and the brain retraining, and the third is then that re-engaging with joy, that direction in life. And let's go deeper now into understanding these 2 concepts. So the way I want to introduce these concepts is to talk about what we call the river analogy, right? So when we have a certain chronic condition, many of us experience that our nervous system is wired. We might be wired but tired. It feels that although we're trying to rest, our nervous system won't let us rest. It's on high alert. And this is what we call the stimulus interpretation response model. So let's take the example, let's say, of Long COVID. So initially when someone had COVID, the stimulus would have been the arrival of the virus. The interpretation would have been, this is a virus that threatening to our wellbeing because survival is what our brain and bodies are built to do. And the response would be stimulating the nervous system and immune system. Okay. Now you imagine that's like a river in your brain. It's like a neural pathway. The stimulus is what is at the beginning of that riverbed, or that river. The pathway is that interpretation, and that response is the water flowing down that pathway. All right? And that's the right thing for our brains to do, is to protect us from danger. And so that's what it is doing, uh, each moment, is protecting us from that virus or that bacteria or that toxin or that traumatic event, right? But then what happens is if the exposure is repeated again and again and again, that groove, that river flow, gets deeper and deeper and deeper into the ground so that it becomes more automatic. All right? And then what happens is if it's there for a long time, other environmental stimuli that otherwise unimportant, they now become a proxy for the COVID right? So what then happens is a brain— the brain thinks, I'm experiencing symptoms in my body, maybe these symptoms mean that the virus is still present, or the bacteria is still present, or the mold is still present. Okay, we must re-stimulate the nervous system and immune system, which then creates more of the water flowing down the left-hand path, which then creates symptoms in the body, which double back to the brain, telling the brain there's something wrong. And that's where an acute illness can turn into a chronic illness. So this is what we call learnt threat responses, where following an illness, stress, trauma, or inflammation, the brain can get stuck in a loop where it keeps overstimulating our nervous and immune system. And to build on this type of approach, there's something called predictive processing. And this is a hot topic in neurology. So bear with me. I know this— we're going deep into the science. I'm going to make this really simple in a moment. But there's something called predictive processing. What that means is that our brain is constantly predicting what's going to happen based on what happened in the past. For instance, when you read the words on a page, did you know that actually your brain is not looking at every single letter of every single word? It's at some level filling in the gaps, and that's why you can read fast, because it's assuming based upon its previous predictions that that word is a word that it recognizes. It doesn't need to see every single letter. And so in a similar way, the brain thinks about, well, the last time that I had this fatigue, this pain, etc., it was in the presence of a virus or bacteria or a threat. So perhaps now I need to continue stimulating the immune system and nervous system, and that can then lead to learned patterns in the brain of fatigue, pain, hypervigilance, dizziness, and so on, sensitivity to the environment, anxiety, burnout. It's what we call deep conditioned neural pathways. So that's where the The water keeps flowing down the left-hand path. The river is now continuous. And then to introduce another concept, there's something called salience and interoceptive predictions. Difficult word to say. What that means is the brain constantly looks at what's the most important thing I need to focus on right now. That's the salience network. And the interoceptive network is what do I need to be aware of that's going on in my body right now. And all of that is predicted, predicted, predicted. So the brain gets stuck in what it's experienced in the last 24 hours or 48 hours and continues to create that experience because that's what it thinks will keep us safe. And so the brain gets stuck in these types of pathways. Okay, you might say, well, what's this to do with nervous system regulation and brain retraining? So imagine we are now stuck in a learnt response in the brain. The learnt— the brain has learnt illness. And in order to change that, we need to now reroute the river. So the water's going down that river, going down that river. We now need to create a new pathway in the brain, a new right-hand path. And we need to dig new pathways using repetition and emotional intensity and consistency. Now, this is where nervous system regulation comes in and is very important. Because imagine that, that ground where the river is flowing, imagine it's completely frozen. And if it's frozen, it's very difficult to dig a new river pathway and divert the river. So then what we do is the purpose of the nervous system regulation, calming down the brain, calming down the body, is it thaws the ground. It loosens up the ground. It gets rid of the ice. So our brains become more neuroplastic, more flexible. So imagine that ground is all icy. As we regulate our nervous system through breathwork, through meditation, through calming exercises, through gentle movement, all of these are designed to calm the nervous system. Stimulate then the parasympathetic nervous system by the vagus nerve, and then enable the brain to loosen up, become more flexible, and then we can start digging the right-hand path. So that's where nervous system regulation comes in. But a lot of people get stuck at that level thinking, well, I'm doing all these amazing techniques, therefore I should heal, whether it's from anxiety or burnout or long COVID or any kind of condition where there's overstimulation. However, that's only a part, a portion of the story. Because once the ground is loosened up, we now need to dig that new neural pathway again and again and again. There's no point unfreezing the ground but then still allowing the water to go along the left-hand path. And that's where the consistency and the repetition comes in, where we're digging the right-hand path and making the water flow. And that's where brain retraining becomes very important. So nervous system regulation and brain retraining are not opposites. They're not competitors. They are completely dependent on each other to work. As an example, if you're someone who keeps reacting to a certain person in your life, right? We all know that one person that knows how to press our buttons. We can do all the meditation and all the breathing and everything to calm down our nervous system. Which will be very useful and very important. But until we then start reflecting on our reactive patterns, start working through them, the pathway itself has not changed. The condition network has not changed. And therefore, when we relax our nervous system, we open our minds to new insights and to new awarenesses, and it helps us then retrain and reprogram Yeah. So I think that's where these, these kind of pathways work together. And I think that's where it's very exciting. And there is precedent for this because in neurology, we know that in animal studies, we're able to take, let's say, a rat and we give it inflammatory bowel disease. So they're able to create an irritant in the gut that creates inflammatory bowel disease. right? And they measure the signature in the insular part of the brain. Then they bring the rats back to baseline and they just stimulate that part of the brain in the insula. This was Dr. Asier Roll's team that did this. This is groundbreaking research that should have been made world headlines because it proves probably 50% of the illnesses you go to see a doctor for was proven by that one study. And when they re-stimulated the insular part of the brain, it recreated inflammatory bowel disease in the gut, which showed us that when our bodies react to our environment—viruses, bacteria, toxins—it actually creates a particular pathway in the brain that if it's re-stimulated unnecessarily, it can create the same immune and nervous system response. Okay. And there's precedent for this because during COVID during that unfortunate time, when people were dying from, from COVID it wasn't because of the COVID infection per se. It was the brain overstimulating inflammatory responses through a cytokine storm in the lungs, which overwhelmed the lungs, reduced oxygen flow, tightened the airways, and eventually led to asphyxiation. So COVID was a classic example of when our nervous system and immune system overreacts. And in these other chronic conditions, it's when our nervous and immune systems overreact in the longer term. So in summary, nervous system regulation, it's for calming, for safety, for downregulation that then prepares the mind and prepares the grounds for brain retraining, which involves the repetition, the emotional shifts, the attentional shifts in the brain so we can experience safety at a more magnified level. And we're also changing the predictive processing of the brain so the brain isn't stuck in what it's always experienced in the past and recreating that as a way of predicting safety in a way that we should live and survival. Instead, we're creating a new predictive processing code in the brain so it learns that this is what we want. This is the new safety that we want to experience. So this is where we have active neuroplastic learning. Changing those predictive patterns and processing, interrupting those conditioned responses. And that's what we do through brain retraining, is training the brain when it got stuck. So in summary, the brain can get stuck. It learns how to overrespond, it learns illness, and it can unlearn illness essentially. And that's where, you know, as you know, we've done 7 clinical studies, 5 randomized controlled trials. You can read all of that on our website. And that can explain to you and show you how we're not just saying this is a hypothesis, but actually we've got lots of clinical proof behind this now as well. So once again, we'd love for you to share this on your social media with your friends, your family, perhaps on different groups, different patient groups, because we really want to get the word out about helping people understand that nervous system regulation is a very important part of the healing process, but is not the whole story by by any stretch, and the two work together, right? Okay, what I'm going to do is I'm now going to share a little video from someone who has navigated this particular journey and has experienced exactly this in terms of looking at the various differences between the two. So this is a little interview with someone called Angus. He's going to just share his, uh, his story. Well, hi there, Angus. Thank you so much for taking out some time of your day to join us. So yeah, first we'd just love to know briefly a bit about your story, like when you got unwell with what condition, and as a contrast, kind of how you're feeling now.

Well, my story, it started about 15 years ago. I was doing a lot of work. I was doing a lot of exercise, and these things sort of came together. And, um, I kind of— I got to a point where I couldn't really— well, actually, um, I was, I was running one night and my legs stopped working, basically. So that was the start of it. Literally stopped working. I had to drag myself back home. And, um, yeah, from that point, I mean, I got to a very low point where I was kind of Literally, I couldn't eat at all, so I was on liquids. Um, so yeah, I mean, a recovery for me at one stage was getting into a wheelchair to get out of the house. So it was a seriously debilitating illness at that time. So, right, I see.

And how would you kind of contrast that to now in terms of what you're able to do and how your life is now?

Yeah, I mean, the, um, just so much, so much beauty and gratitude in my life at the moment. Um, well, I mean, tonight I went— I mean, literally tonight I went down with my family and we went down to the beach. We— I mean, the beaches are so beautiful here in Australia, and we went kangaroo watching and my daughter's just there with a doodle pad drawing pictures of kangaroos. And the joy and the gratitude to have that health to go walking down by the beach with my family after spending the day with them as well, with a school event, you know, just, yeah, my life is a lot more fulfilled with energy and enthusiasm and laughter.

Lovely. What a beautiful, uh, what a beautiful story. And what were you eventually diagnosed with?

Um, it was, uh, so they called it at the time chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. So it's, you know, ME. So yeah.

And before you kind of came to the GUTS program, did you— had you tried other healing modalities? Had you tried any kind of nervous system regulation type stuff?

Yeah, I, um, hadn't really. No, I was under the doctor's, um, medication, and I can't actually remember what it was called that was taken, but, um, I was getting desperate for things. I was taking— I got, um, you know, tablets, and I was just taking them and hoping for the best. So I had no idea of For me, coming into the Gupta program, thought, um, looking at thoughts, looking at meditation was completely new. Nervous system regulation, I, I was not aware of these things. No, it was all new for me. Yeah, yeah.

And as you were kind of taking the journey, I guess you kind of see these pieces fit together. So in the program we talk about how does a dove fly? Well, it needs 3 things. It needs the left and right wing, and it needs the tail feathers for a direction. And those wings are obviously nervous system regulation and brain retraining. So as you came into the program, obviously in the program we start with the nervous system regulation and the somatic retraining, and then we move on to kind of more in-depth retraining. How did— when you first started, how did you think these jigsaw pieces fitted together, and how, how did it flow for you?

Yeah, um, when I first started, um, I was, um, trying to stop the thoughts in the brain retraining sense, um, and I worked with, um, an absolutely wonderful person called Dev Mayan, and she helped to guide me with the nervous system, um, regulation. We started to find safe spaces and she taught me about safe spaces. Um, we used to use— she uses a wonderful tool where we look around a room and we find, you know, relaxing or calm safe objects in a room. So I worked— I, I understood it with that, and then I started to use that. And then I started to use the brain retraining as well in conjunction with it.

So yeah, yeah, it worked that way. Fantastic. So you saw how they kind of interconnect and how they— how would you see them dependent on each other? The nervous system regulation and the brain retraining?

Well, absolutely. Because I mean, yeah, it's like kind of sowing the seed or laying the foundations, being in the right state to be able to see these parts or these thoughts, um, if we haven't regulated our system, it very can become identified with it and very difficult then to retrain at that point. So it's, it's kind of like, you know, um, so just laying the foundations with the regulation and just being able to calm the system. Like, I mean, in laughter yoga, I would, I would say, you know, turning down the dial, turning down the dial, and then being able to retrain them. So that, you know, this is the regulation dial, we just turn it down.

So, um, yeah, that's a lovely way of putting it, actually. I like that. Um, what kind of role do you think repetition and consistency plays in, in progress and recovery? Because obviously in the program, we talk a lot about people having dips, people feeling disheartened, and then kind of falling off the wagon, as it were. How did repetition and consistency matter in, in your recovery?

Yeah, I, um, I grew to love the, the meditations. And, um, I, I was very— I have to be clear and honest, I was very, very disciplined and like, I, I, you know, I, I like my meditations now, and I'll start my day with meditations and end it as well. Um, and I was, I was doing, um, I would say I was probably doing 3 times a day, a meditation in the morning, a meditation around lunchtime, and one in the evening. And then obviously Brain Retraining in and around that as well. So I was keen, and I was, you know, I was pretty thorough with that. And but it was helping me, so, and I was enjoying it, you know, finding the joy as well, finding the enjoyment and the laughter and the fun in it, um, finding the community as well and interacting. I've interacted with literally hundreds of people on the Gupta program. It's been a great part of my life, to be honest with you, as I've recovered and, um, I'm really grateful for that, but by immersing myself in it, I know you, you know, obviously I've been on webinars with yourself and it's been, well, it needs to be like cleaning your teeth, and I definitely become, became like that for me. So yeah, that was, it was a big part, discipline was repetition. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we see that as the critical success factor when we ask people who recovered We sometimes people expect there's gonna be some magical thing that they say or some new revelation. So you just gotta keep at it. Keep consistent. Yeah. It's like, you know, you're training your brain. It's like learning a musical instrument or learning a piece of music or learning a song. It's that repetition that then brings it deep into your brain, your nervous system. And then it becomes a new habit that your, your body follows. And, um, as you say, it's that, it's that discipline, that repetition that really makes it. Great. And what advice would you have for people then who are thinking about, you know, they might be thinking about just doing nervous system regulation because there's a lot of things out there that are just focused on that, or they're thinking, you know, does brain retraining, is it different? Is that the important piece? How would you, what advice would you give them?

Um, uh, yeah, I mean, 100% is just first, I, I'll spend time now in my, in my, um, meditations and just, just taking the time to become in your body. I actually did, I did some Qi Gong qualifications and just, just becoming into your, getting into your body, taking the time first to regulate your system prior to retraining. And, and, you know, no pressure and no worries. This might take, it might, like turning down the dial might take a bit of time, you know. And just do what you can. So if it takes, say, 25 minutes of regulation and then just 5 minutes of retraining, and then just being aware of how you're gonna oscillate between the two, basically. And sometimes it might be the opposite way around, it might be 25 minutes. You know, it's just being aware of what's right for you and just sort of laying the foundations with the regulation And then obviously the retraining comes afterwards, effectively.

Great. And yeah, so as you mentioned, you're now living, you know, a fuller life. You're able to do most things. And how does that feel?

It's just amazing. I mean, I mean, as you can gather, a lot of my things around— I, when I— Matilda, my daughter, is like 9. She was 9 the other day. And I had a lot of upset around not being able to be a dad to her when I've obviously been ill for 15 years. So that was, you know, she came along during the illness and that was really upsetting. To be a father to my daughter is the best thing. I cannot tell you. You know, it just— she had a birthday party the other day and there was 13 children there, and I'm there. I mean, these are just memories that will stick with me forever. And I'm cutting this cake and just, you know, these hungry kids all around me and handing it out. And I'm just thinking, this is a 3-hour party with kids running around at a pool here in Australia and lovely warm weather, and kids are just having cake off me. And I just thought, this is what I always wanted, to be honest with you, just to be a father to my daughter. And, you know, is the most— is priceless, absolutely priceless. So yeah, and thank you, Ashok, for that as well.

Yeah, thank you, and congratulations to you for keeping up that consistency and that momentum to get to where you are. So thank you, Angus, it's been so lovely to have a chat with you, to get your reflections on this topic today, and I wish you all the best in the future.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Okay, well, that was obviously a really touching story from Angus there. So really beautiful to kind of have his reflections and his input. And what we'd like you to know now is that we're going to be having a live event with Q&A with myself on Zoom right now. So our team will share the Zoom link in the chat, and we'd love for you to join us for that Zoom event where you get to ask questions, find out more about the program. And as we've mentioned, we previously had just an upfront payment that people made for the program, but we want to make this more accessible. We know there's a cost of living crisis and we try to make the price of the program as low and as reasonable as possible for the amount of things that we support you with. So we have daily live sessions on Zoom Monday to Friday, live nervous system regulation, live brain retraining each day on Zoom, which is, you know, a really powerful way of being in community and supporting each other. So I think that, um, that kind of thing is really powerful. And then secondly, uh, we have weekly webinars with myself and so on. So love for you to join us on Zoom right now. So if you can— Fatima, could you share the Zoom link in the chat? Uh, we'll be going on Zoom for a live Q&A, and we'll be introducing our installment plan where you can pay for the program in installments as well. Now, some people in the comments talking about trauma and the importance of trauma, and I just want to— our program is trauma-informed in the sense that most of our coaches, they work one-on-one with people as well, and we make sure that people understand that trauma and understanding how trauma fits into the jigsaw puzzle is very important parts of healing. And so that is an important part of our program as well. So once again, please do share this on your social media with people around you and, uh, let them know now that we have this installment program. So if our team could also just share a link to the page with the installment program, uh, where you can pay for the program over the space of 6 months to make it more affordable, that would be great as well. Okay, so thank you so much to everybody for watching and, uh, and listening. I think this is a slight technical issue, you may not be able to see me right now, but hopefully you can still hear me. So once again, please do share the link, uh, to our installment plan, and, uh, we'll see you on Zoom very shortly. So there you are, there you can see the link to the installment plan, and that gives you an opportunity to spread the payments out. And we really want to make sure there's, there's no barriers and it's accessible as possible. And with Whether you buy the program upfront or you buy it using the installment program, we do offer a 1-year money-back guarantee. So our program is a 3 to 6 month program. After 6 months, if you don't have improvement, you can return the program, no questions asked. And finally, when people return the program, they used to say, well, we have to send it abroad if they're based in the US or Canada, but we now have a returns address in the US as well. So it's very cheap and easy to return a program have a refund and you can spend it on something else. So really looking forward to seeing you on Zoom. Hope you get an opportunity to start the program. And we have our webinar series starting on Monday the 1st of June, so it's now a great time over the next few days to join us. We'll be starting our weekly webinars on Monday. So thank you so much everyone for watching, and we'll see you again soon on the Zoom. We'll see you in about 10 minutes on the Zoom link. Thanks everyone, bye!