Meditation and its Healing Power for Chronic Conditions

Warm welcome to the official Gupta Program Facebook page. My name is Ashok Gupta and today we're going to be talking about a very interesting topic which is all about how we can use meditation to help us heal from chronic conditions. And those chronic conditions may be things like me, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivities, or a whole host of other conditions which are related to that, such as irritable bowel syndrome, generalised anxiety as well. And so I'm very glad that you've been able to join me today, taking time out from your busy days, I'm sure to be here with me and to discuss some of these very pertinent topics to your recovery from these conditions. And I know some of you are already using the Gupta Program, which is a treatment for these conditions, and some of you are totally new, you've not met me before. And some of you just want to find out more about how you can use meditation in your day to day practices of healing. So whatever your background, however much you know about the Gupta Program or not, today I really want to focus on why meditation is so useful, the effects it has on the brain and the body and how we can incorporate it into our day. So I'm hoping that by the end of today you'll be able to take some very practical tools away with you and something that you can put into practice on day one as soon as we finish. Now I know that people are joining us from all over the world, from America, Australia, even Africa, Asia, so I'd love to give some shout out. So if you are just joining us on the call, what I'd love to do is for you to, on the comment page, just put in where you're tuning in from today so that we can give you a bit of a shout out. It's always nice to know who else is joining us on the our Facebook live. So we always try to do that each time that we do it. And whilst we're just waiting for that to happen, just to give you a bit of background to myself. So obviously those of you who are using the Gupta program already know a bit about my background, but I just want to share for those who perhaps don't even know who I am. So as I said, my name is Ashok Gupta and I used to suffer from me chronic fatigue syndrome many, many years ago and I suffered from it intensely for a few years. I did a lot of research into the brain neurology of illness, the brain neurology of emotion as well, and put a lot of pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together and in a very ad hoc way managed to get to a full 100% recovery. And I've been recovered ever since. And since then I've published a few medical papers on my hypothesis as to what causes the condition, as well as some trial studies that we've done. And I've also set up a clinic to help people all over the world with the condition. So we have a DVD program and we have webinars and things like that to help people recover. And I've made it my lifelong quest to really help people with this condition, get them through it and give them the best tools for recovery. And in terms of the hypothesis, I won't spend too long on it because today I really want to focus on talking more about meditation. The full explanation of the hypothesis as to what I believe causes these chronic conditions is available on our website. So if you go to our website, which is guptaprogram.com and it can be the English spelling or the American spelling now, so Gupta G-U-P-T a program P R O GR A M dot com and you will find if you click on the research page, a full explanation of what I believe causes these conditions based on the brain neurology. And I do believe that this is a real physical condition and of course you didn't need me to tell you that. And I believe that it's perpetuated by a malfunction deep in the unconscious part of the brain and that's what we target using brain retraining type of techniques. So very briefly, because I think it is relevant to why meditation can help us heal from these types of chronic conditions. Very briefly I will run through the hypothesis so you get a flavour for it. But as I said, you can easily find out more information on our website. So let's just see if anyone's given us a comment or two about where they're tuning in from so we can say hello. So we've got Kiran and Kiran and Jaginda who are tuning in from Wolverhampton in the West Midlands in the uk. Scott, I'm not sure where he's tuning in from, but he likes the sound, which is great. Nikki from York, Constance from Miami. Welcome to you, Susan, welcome to you. Saying this program has helped me more than any other therapy. Thank you for that, Kristin. Tuning in from Naples in Florida. So you can see we have so many people from all over the world and that's the fantastic benefits of these social media interactions that we have, that I can communicate directly with you. Wherever you are in the world. And obviously you get to ask questions later on as well. Big hello to David from Germany. Welcome to you. And of course, as we're going through today, what I'd love for you to do is to share what you're watching because there are so many people out there suffering from these conditions who could really benefit from what we're going to talk about. And I would love for you to share this perhaps with other MECFS groups, fibromyalgia groups, chemical sensitivity groups, irritable bowel syndrome groups, anxiety groups that perhaps you're a member of, just so they can also tune in live if they choose to. And you can share this live feed on your own personal Facebook page or some of those groups and pages as well. That would be wonderful. David tuning in from Dallas, Texas. Welcome to you. Constant saying, how long will the webinar last? So we'll just be on for an hour or so. Hopefully it'll be less than an hour. Trying to make it short. Georgie from South Africa, Hi there. Diana tuning in from the prairie provinces in Canada where it's nice and sunny, and Ann Marie tuning in from the Netherlands. So it's wonderful to see all of you and please do keep your comments coming in and anything you want to share with other people on the group. And I love to give you some more shout outs a bit later on. Okay. So in terms of the hypothesis as to what I believe causes these conditions, and it's so interesting because I actually attend many of these conferences around the world where they're discussing these different treatments or different ways of understanding the condition, or the researchers and every part of medicine is attending. So you'll have the neurologists, you'll have the psychologists, you'll have so many branches of medicine that are represented. And I believe that the reason these conditions occur is because they are starting in the brain. And obviously the brain affects all parts of the body, whereas in medical research generally we tend to treat the body like a car. So if something goes wrong with the exhaust, we fix the exhaust. Something goes wrong with the engine, we fix the engine. But actually, these conditions, I believe, are based on the entire neurology malfunctioning. And therefore it's going to require us going to the root source, which is the brain. And yet the brain is probably the least accessible part of us when it comes to any kind of therapy that it can improve our condition. And if we take a step back, I always ask that biggest question of all, why are we here now? Not from a philosophical Perspective. But from a scientific perspective, we are here because over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, millions of years of evolution, the nervous system of animals, and then eventually us, has become refined to be able to handle our environments. And so our systems are designed to help us survive. Survival is the number one priority of our nervous system and our brain. When I say the nervous system, I mean all the electrical nerves that are like, running through our body and are the software of the system. So our nervous system is like the software because it communicates with all the cells and all the organs, giving instructions as to what we should do next, what those organs should do next, and getting feedback from the body, which feeds back to the brain. So the brain, if you like, is the. The hub of the software. And the body is like the hardware. So it's the software telling the hardware what to do. And as you know, I'm a bit of an IT geek, so I always love that analogy because it's very clear and helps us understand how the two parts of our bodies, systems are connected. And that system, that neurology, that brain, that's the head of the nervous system, its priority is to help us survive. It cares more about our survival than our healthiness. And we'll be coming back to that point in a moment. So I believe that at the beginning of these conditions, people often are experiencing chronic or acute stress. So they have a lot of stress in the system, which means that their brain is more vulnerable to learning new conditioning. What I mean by that is the brain is more vulnerable to learning new bits of things that it should do. That's what a software program is, things that it should do. So our brain is on high alert, often at the beginning of the condition. Not always. Not everybody reports acute or chronic stress, but many people do, and then that combines with a physical illness. So in the case of ME cfs, it tends to be a flu virus or a stomach bug. In the case of fibromyalgia, it tends to be a physical injury or a physical accident or a localized pain syndrome that generalizes to the body. And in chemical sensitivities, it tends to be exposure to some kind of chemical mould, paint, etc. And in irritable bowel syndrome, it tends to be food poisoning, actually can often be a trigger for irritable bowel syndrome, some kind of stomach bug. So the two things connect. So we've got anxiety, stress, or just overstimulation. Overworked, you may not be stressed, but just be overworked combining with a physical condition. And because the immune system is lowered and often our immune system is lower, less effective. When we are experiencing stress. That means our immune system gets panicked and thinks, oh, we may not survive. And take the example of flu. Many people pass away from flu every year. And so the system goes into overdrive. It goes into what I call an extreme survival mode, which is the perfectly logical thing for the system to do. We take getting over flu for granted or getting over a cold, but as far as the body's concerned, it's still life threatening. So the system goes into overdrive. And even once the flu virus has gone or the, the stomach bug is gone, the system still thinks that it's there. And just to err on the side of caution, just to make sure we survive, I believe our defensive systems keep on high alert. What that means is that even once the original trigger has gone, the system is now traumatized. That defensive system and defensive system means the nervous system, the immune system, the endocrine system, all of those systems are now on very high alert. And you might say, well, hang on, but the original bug is gone. So why have I got all of these symptoms? Well, when we think of having flu, for instance, all of the symptoms of flu, the vast majority of symptoms of flu are caused by our own immune system reacting. They're not caused by the flu virus itself. And so even once the original trigger may have been removed from our system, the body is still responding as if that original trigger is still present. And anything that reminds the brain of that original trigger, it will then trigger the immune system, trigger the nervous system, increase inflammation which is part of the immune system response. And in the case of multiple chemical sensitivities, we have exposure to a chemical, the brain then overreacts because it's in hyper defense mode because of the stress and anxiety. And then it learns to generalize defensive responses to all chemicals. So then we find that someone with chemical sensitivities is sensitive to fragrances and mould and chemical smells and sprays and all kinds of different things and becomes hyper, hypersensitive. And the case of electrical sensitivities, it's a similar situation as well. The brain learns to become sensitive to electrical fields. The good news is these are all temporary responses, temporary learnt responses. And so all that happens is that then once that system has been set up and it's been become traumatized, it keeps over stimulating defensive responses. And those defensive responses cause our symptoms, which are in the case of me, cfs, you know, difficulty sleeping, difficulty handling, temperature changes, cognitive difficulty, so difficulties thinking extreme Exhaustion, muscle fatigue and pain, all the, you know, the symptoms that are associated with me and chronic fatigue syndrome. And in case of fibromyalgia, similar set of symptoms, but more of an emphasis on pain. And we know that those pain networks, those pain systems become highly sensitive. So that means there can be over inflammation at a peripheral level. So the body itself becomes inflamed and the brain becomes inflamed. And we have clinical evidence of this which once again shows that the defensive systems are over triggered and trying to fight a non existent threat. In the case of chemical sensitivities, once again, those allergic reactions, defensive reactions in irritable bowel, what we find is that when we got food poisoning, the system is trying to squeeze out the food as quickly as possible, wash out the food so that we can get rid of all the bacteria. But if we then have irritable bowel, where the system and the stomach and the intestines are still responding as if the original trigger is there, all the muscle walls become tight and therefore food is not being digested properly through the colon and through the intestines. And that's what then causes the pain, the diarrhea, constipation, etc. And that symptom can also be something that occurs in me, CFS and fibromyalgia. And those symptoms then come back to the brain because we said there's a feedback loop, those symptoms come back to the brain and the brain thinks, oh no, I've got all these symptoms, that must mean I'm still ill, right? Let me over trigger defensive responses again. And so we get that vicious cycle of the brain highly sensitized to signals from the body, triggering the nervous system and the immune system, etc. Those symptoms, those triggerings then cause the symptoms in the body. Those symptoms are then detected by the brain and the brain and the body get caught in a vicious cycle of sensitivity response, sensitivity response. And here at the Gupta program, the core of our treatment is retraining the brain out of these defensive responses, telling the brain that we are no longer in danger because we can't directly rewire the brain. We can't directly switch off the immune system when the system thinks that that is the right thing to do. Therefore, we target the aspects of that defence response which are more colloquial, more emotional and more easier to access for us and help the whole system calm down. And evidence of this is actually in terms of thought. So many people report that with these conditions they feel wired. You may feel that you're feeling wired all the time. Even though you're exhausted, you have a busy mind, you find it perhaps difficult to relax. It can be difficult to think clearly because all the brain cares about is bombarding you with signals about how your body is feeling because it thinks we're in danger, Come on, do something about it. But there's nothing you can do about it because the very symptoms are being caused by that over defensive response in and of itself. So that's just a bit of explanation as to what actually causes these particular conditions. And this then causes us a lot of stress, a lot of hypervigilance about our bodies, a feeling that perhaps we're not going to get better, a very busy, stressed out mind, and on top of that, stress about how the condition is affecting us. Stress can also be defined as the difference between, at the top of this rubber band, the expectations or demands or pressures placed on us, our perception of that, and at the bottom of the rubber band, the perception of our abilities to meet those demands. And the more the difference between the expectations and our abilities, the more we experience stress. So we can simply define stress as stress on this rubber band by the difference between expectations and demands and our abilities or the perception of our abilities. So when we have a chronic condition, the stress increases even more because we've still got to live life, we've still got to do things, but we're exhausted and we find it difficult to do that. And all of this then doesn't help the situation, of course. And that's where we come on to meditation, because a very important part of the brain, retraining. And even if you choose not to engage with the Gupta program, I would still encourage you to engage with meditation from whatever source you want in order to further your recovery. And I want to explain why meditation is useful, why it's powerful and how it helps. So first of all, the question might be, well, what is meditation? Well, let me describe what meditation is not. And often now meditation is actually taught incorrectly. Meditation is not having an empty mind. Yeah, sorry, let me say that again. Meditation is not about having an empty mind, although most people's perception of meditation is exactly that. Oh, yeah, Meditation means having no thoughts, right? No, that is the incorrect perception that most of the population have about what meditation is. When we are starting out with meditation, it's very unusual or very rare for us to have an empty mind. Perhaps down the line with lots of months or years of practice, you might suddenly find we can have an empty mind. But initially it is not about having an empty mind. It's not thought control either. It's not about controlling your thoughts. And meditation is not about having lots and lots of effort, lots of focus and concentration. Come on, come on. I've got to make the effort to meditate. That's just more pressure, more expectations. Instead, what meditation is about is being the observer of what's going on in your mind. So normally we think we are our minds. So this is our minds going panic. Panic. Help. Help. Worry, Worry. What does our mind do? Worry a lot of the time Overstress. Think too much. Yeah. And also go into the past. And the future keeps thinking about the past, the things that went wrong, the things that went badly, or past glories. And he thinks about the future. Fear and anxiety about the future. And then we think we are the mind. Yeah, we identify with the mind and all those worrisome thoughts. But meditation is saying, hang on a minute, let me take a step back. So let's do a short exercise. You know, it's quite funny. I said to a friend of mine, I'm conducting a Facebook live on meditation. He said, well, are you going to be talking all the way through? And I said, well, yes, I think so. And he said, well, why don't you just shut up and let people meditate? So I think it's very important that we do a practical exercise. So what I'd like you to do now is I'd like you to simply close your eyes. Okay, let's open our eyes now. What did you notice there? What did your mind do? Did you notice your mind saying things, doing things? In fact, you can perhaps share that on the comments section in terms of what kind of thoughts came up for you. So you might have thought, is he still saying something? Perhaps my Internet connection is gone and I can't hear anything. Why has he asked us to close our eyes? Maybe you were thinking about food and dinner. Thinking, oh, I'm actually quite hungry. I wonder what's going to be on TV tonight. Yeah, all of these random thoughts come up in the minds, and that is showing us that our mind is a stream of thoughts, a stream of worries that is often very unconscious. It just keeps coming up and up and we jump onto that thought and we identify with it and think that that is us or that is real. But hang on a minute. What about if we observed our thoughts? So can we be our thoughts and observe them at the same time? So let's do another exercise. Let's close our eyes, but this time let's label our thoughts. Oh, that's a thought. About dinner. As soon as we notice we're having a thought, we just go, oh, there's a thought about dinner. That's okay, I accept that. Oh, there's a thought about something I'm experiencing in my body right now. Oh, there's a thought about today's webinar. So we're just going to identify and notice our thoughts and then just label them and accept them. Let's close our eyes. Let's take a slow, deep breath in and breathe out. And let's just observe and label our thoughts. It. Okay, let's take a slow, deep breath in and breathe out. Let's open our eyes when we're ready. For some reason, I thought about chocolate in that particular exercise. Now, what did you notice that was different? I'm sure you noticed that you may have had less thoughts. And because you are watching your mind, your mind wasn't stuck in this stream of unconsciousness necessarily. Or perhaps it was, but you were able to observe it, and you were able to disidentify from your mind and say, ah, I can mindfully watch what's going on. And so meditation is about taking the observer position, observing what's going on in the mind without judgment, or trying to stop your thoughts or trying to direct your thoughts. And often meditation is accompanied by a sound or you become aware of your breathing. Because the mind can be quite busy, we like to give the mind something to do. So instead of a constant stream of all these types of thoughts, we say to the mind, hey, perhaps we can bring all of these disparate parts of the mind together and focus on one thing. So perhaps we become aware of our breathing. Perhaps we become aware of a sound or music. Perhaps we become aware of a particular mantra that people are given to meditate on so that all those disparate parts of the mind can come together. And the mind will listen and become aware of the breathing, and then it will go off in a different direction and think about something else. And we become aware of that without judgment. We gently bring it back to that focus, that awareness, and then it does it again. But we don't tell our minds off. We don't think there's anything wrong. We don't think meditation is about having an empty mind. We know that what's happening is perfectly good, perfectly normal, and with complete acceptance. We observe and very gently and slowly bring our mind back to the focus of the meditation. And you might say, well, I might be meditating and all I'm experiencing are just constant thoughts, constant stream of thoughts. And if that happens. That's perfectly normal and perfectly fine. In fact, one way analogy I give that helps us understand what's going on in meditation at the beginning is imagine our minds are like a pressure cooker, and we've been stuffing down all our thoughts and emotions for years into this pressure cooker. Perhaps we've had a lot of stressful emotions today or yesterday, and that pressure cooker is storing all those emotions and thoughts. Meditation is suddenly when we stop using the outside world as a distraction away from our unresolved emotions, which is often what we do. And instead we become aware, okay, what's in this pressure cooker? And the moment that we look at that pressure cooker, it's like opening the valve at the top of the pressure cooker and some steam comes out. And suddenly we become more aware of all of these thoughts, all of these emotions, some negative, some positive. And it comes out like a constant stream of thoughts, a constant stream of energy being released. So for some people, at the beginning of the their meditation practice, they may notice an increase in thoughts, an increase in some emotions like anxiety. But we have to go through that to allow the release, sorry, of all that unconscious pressure. And that's what we're doing sometimes at the beginning of meditation. And that's why for some people, it can be quite tricky at the beginning or quite. They feel that agitation. But it's so worth it, because each time you meditate, you're releasing more and more and more pressure from that pressure cooker until eventually the pressure cooker can begin to slow down, calm down, there's no pressure stuck inside. And you begin to get those glimpses of what we think meditation is, which is those silent spaces between the thoughts. So we have a thought, we bring our minds back, and just for a millisecond or half a second or a few seconds, we notice a space of nothingness. And then another thought comes in, and that's okay. But it's those little spaces between the thoughts and emotions which is deeply restorative for our mind and body. It's deeply healing. It's a deep, calm feeling that triggers the opposite of our stress system. And the opposite of our stress system is called the parasympathetic nervous system. So we know from research studies that people who regularly meditate, it's easier for them to kick in that parasympathetic nervous system, which is sometimes called the rest, heal and digest system. It's a system that the body uses when it's in downtime to heal itself. So meditation is that art of being the observer and also it's the art of doing nothing. So when you're meditating, you're not trying to do anything. Sure, you're observing, bringing your mind back to your breathing, but apart from that, there's nothing you have to do. You don't have to focus or concentrate really hard. You don't need to worry about anything. You don't need to think about your wants and cares and desires. You know, sometimes we're meditating, but thinking, come on, come on, I haven't got time for this, I've got other things that I should be doing. But this is your relaxation time, this is your downtime. And I appreciate and I felt like this when I first meditated. Isn't this a bit of a waste of time? I could be doing better things. And that's because as a society we've not learnt the ability to just be. We are a human being, not a human doing. We just can learn the benefits and appreciate how powerful it is just to sit and do nothing for a period of time. And deeply healing and restorative it is for us mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually to do that. And in fact, once we regularly meditate, a lot of the neurological studies have shown that it actually calms down the overall reactivity of the brain. So you may have heard me talk about a brain structure called the amygdala, which is often our emotional part of the brain that reacts to the external environment when we experience danger or anger. And we know that regular meditators have a less reactive amygdala. We also know that regular meditators have less activity the right prefrontal cortex. So when we have more activity in this front part of the brain here, it's associated more with anxiety and depression and worry and negativity. But there's a shift away from that to an increase in the left prefrontal cortex, which is associated more with rationality and awareness. We know that our attention span increases, our ability to focus and concentrate increases lots of benefits that come from calming the system. And that's because our defense resistance are designed to be stimulated for a few minutes, then come back to balance, stimulate the immune system, come back to balance, stimulate the fight or flight response for a few minutes, come back to balance. But if our system is over triggered all the time, we're losing our ability to think clearly, we're losing the energy in the body. It's leaking. We lose far more energy worrying than we do walking a mile. And so with regular meditation, we're able to bring the system more back to its balance. A recent Harvard study showed that people who learnt meditation and practiced it, compared to before meditation, they had almost a 50% drop in their usage of medical facilities. Yeah. Now isn't that amazing? Let's just become aware of that fact for a moment, because it was on fire. It was from 4400 people. So this wasn't a small study. This was a large, clinically significant, highly significant study. So we're talking about health care costs increasing around the world, and yet we know that meditation could halve the usage of medical facilities. It would be a miracle drug. If someone came up with a miracle drug that could halve the usage of medical facilities, they would be the richest person in the world. And yet we have it here, it's available, it's free, has no side effects, and yet it just requires that 20 minutes of our time a day. And 20 minutes tends to be the sweet spot, or at least a minimum of 20 minutes. So the benefits are that it reduces our immune system triggering, reduces inflammation, calms down our heart rate and blood pressure, and most importantly, for a lot of these conditions, it gets our sleep cycles back to normal. So I'm sure you may notice that you find it perhaps difficult to stay asleep or get to sleep or you don't feel refreshed in the morning. So regular meditation is known to get our sleep cycles back to normal. And for those of you suffering from pain, fibromyalgia. We know that there are two things that really help pain. One is calming down the reactivity of the brain, especially meditation. And secondly, when the brain, the prefrontal cortex, is focused on other activities. So engaged distraction in other things can also help pain as well. And most importantly of all, it just makes us feel calmer, happier, less reactive, less a slave to all those negative thoughts that run around in our minds. But what blocks us, what blocks us is thinking, oh, I don't have the time for this, I don't have the energy to meditate. And anyway, I'm just sitting there and all I'm thinking about is what's for dinner or what I'm going to do tomorrow, or getting my to do list ready. I'm not even really meditating. And the hope I want to give you is that with regular practice, it will become easier. And it is that regularity that really matters. And I would advise that once we learn meditation, that we meditate for a minimum of 20 minutes. And before we meditate, we may decide to do a few minutes of alternate nostril breathing, which I will, I'll send you an email about that as well. So for those of you who signed up for the webinar, I'll send you an email with a link to a video explaining a few minutes of alternate nostril breathing, so how to breathe through alternate nostrils, which helps take us into meditation. And then I'll also send you a video which goes deeper into how to meditate as well. So for those of you who signed up the website with your email address and name, you'll get an email link to that. And for the rest of you, if you'd like to go to that original link that you got and just sign up, then I'll make sure that you get that. So we can just do a few minutes of breathing and if you don't do alternate nostril breathing, just a few minutes of deep breathing and then a 20 minute meditation. And if 20 minutes is too long, then of course you can do a 10 minute meditation if you choose to. And we've got an app, so if you're finding it difficult to meditate, and certainly when you first start meditating, it's better to do it to guided meditations because you've got someone who's leading you through them. So I've developed a not for profit, completely free app called the Meaning of Life Experiment. So if you've got an Android phone or an Apple phone or a tablet or an iPad, you can listen to all of these free meditations by downloading the app. It's called the Meaning of Life Experiment. And if you want to get the direct link, you can go to our website, which is themeaningoflife tv, and that will give you a link to the app. And in the app there's 30 days as such in the timeline, and you've got lots of 10 and 20 minute meditations that you can use. Straight away you might say, well, when's the ideal time to meditate? Well, before food is the ideal time. So at least before food or two hours after food. So you don't want to be meditating with food in your stomach. And all the other instructions are in the meditation video that I'm going to send to you all. And really the hope that I want to give you is that whatever condition you're experiencing, even though doctors tell us that, oh, you can't get better from this condition, there's no cure, you're going to have it for years, I want you to know that so many people recover from this condition. We have hundreds of people recovering every few months using Our treatment program, and an important part of our treatment program is regular meditation. And the core of the program is retraining the brain, retraining the brain out of these defensive responses. And the meditation is a supporting tool to that, that helps support the brain retraining. And so I hope that you'll have a look at the app that you'll practice meditation in the mornings. And if you can't do it in the morning, obviously you can do it during the day. But the ideal time would be to do a 20 minute meditation before breakfast and perhaps a 20 minute meditation in the evening, retraining the brain out of these defensive responses. And the meditation is a supporting tool to that, that helps support the brain retraining. And so I hope that you'll have a look at the app that you'll practice evening or afternoon sometime or even before you go to sleep. And if you use meditation in the mornings and if you can't do it in the morning, obviously you can do it during the day. But the idea find that meditation actually increases your anxiety, then we do have other types of meditations and visualizations that you can do which are perhaps a bit easier when you first time would be to do a 20 minute meditation before breakfast and perhaps a 20 minute meditation in the evening or afternoon sometime or even before you go to sleep. And if you find that meditation actually increases your anxiety, then we do have other types of meditations and visualizations that you can do which are perhaps a bit easier when you first start. So when you get the app on day nine, there is one called the surrender meditation, which is more of a guided visualization rather than a meditation. And day 10, which is the soften and flow, which is another meditation, which is more a mindful meditation that can help ease anxiety. If you're finding that the other meditations perhaps are increasing a bit of the anxiety, that's perfectly normal to start. So when you get the app on day nine, there is one called the surrender meditation, which is more of a guided visualization rather than a meditation. And day 10, which is the soften and flow, which is another meditation, which is more a mindful meditation that can help ease anxiety. If you're finding that the other meditations perhaps are increasing a bit of the anxiety, that's perfectly normal at the beginning. And if people say to you, well, you know, you can meditate by walking, you can do a walking meditation or a mindfully washing the dishes, and that's the same as meditation in my view. Those things are useful in mindfulness, but nothing Beats sitting down, closing your eyes and listening to the meditation, just gently formal at the beginning. And if people say to you, well, you know, you can meditate by walking, you can do a walking meditation or a mindfully washing the dishes, and that's the same as meditation in my view. Those things are useful in mindfulness. But nothing beats sitting down, closing your eyes and listening to the meditation and just gently following the instructions. That is a very, very important part of our healing recovery, regardless of the condition that we may have. So I just want to let you know that I want to do whatever I can to support your healing from whatever you're experiencing. So obviously we've got the meditation, the app, and if you want to kind of go deeper into the brain, retraining the instructions, that is a very, very important part of our healing recovery, regardless of the condition that we may have. So I just want to let you know that I want to do whatever I can to support your healing from whatever you're experiencing. So obviously we've got the meditation, the app, and if you want to kind of go deeper into the brain retraining itself, as you know, we have a treatment program called the Gupta Program, which involves a home study course with DVDs. Then we have weekly webinars and some audio CDs and a forum and lots of other support. We've got trained practitioners who can help you with your recovery itself. As you know, we have a treatment program called the Gupta Program, which involves a home study course with DVDs. And then we have weekly webinars and some audio CDs. And starting next Monday, the 21st of May 2017, we'll be starting forum and lots of other support. We've got trained practitioners who can help you with your recovery. And Starting next Monday, 21st May 2017, we'll be starting our next series of 12 webinars. So our three months of coaching through the Internet. And so if you want to join that program, then you can sign up at our next series of 12 webinars. So our three months of coaching through the Internet, our website, which I mentioned at the beginning, guptaprogram.com and with our entire and so if you want to join that program, then you can sign up at our website, which I mentioned at the beginning, guptaprogram.com and with our entire treatment, because we haven't got the large independent studies yet, we've got smaller, we've got small studies which have been published, but we haven't got the large one yet, which is what we're raising funds for. So until then, we're offering a complete money back guarantee so you can use the treatment and after six months, if you notice an improvement return program, get your money back, no questions asked. And in terms of the small studies that we have done, a couple of studies have shown that around two thirds of patients who use the treatment reach a 80 to 100% recovery within a year. So we've had a small study published in 2010, we've had another study published in 2012, and we've had a recent study which is about to be published, which was conducted in Spain on fibromyalgia, and that once again also showed that 2/3 of patients reached an 80 to 100% recovery, which is very exciting. And we hope that that study will then leapfrog us into larger funding for a large clinical study. Okay, so I'll take the guidance on my friend. I think I've talked for far too long now. So let's just go to any questions that you may have about meditation and how it can impact positively on your recovery from chronic conditions. And once again, I'd love for you to share this stream. So right now you can even share this video on other groups that you're members of, other Facebook pages that are involved in these particular conditions. I'm sure they would love to benefit from this knowledge as well. So just looking at some of the questions that you've got here, Jane saying I often fall asleep during meditation. Is that okay? Yes. The rule of thumb is whatever you experience in meditation is right for you at that time. So if you have a deep, drowsy meditation and you think you've fallen asleep, that's okay. Because what meditation was giving you then is that deep healing. And that sleep that you've got, although you might feel a bit groggy afterwards, has been removing some of that deep exhaustion from your system. And certainly once again, when I first started meditating, I would have those very deep, sleepy meditations. But it really healed and helped. And if you notice little pains in your body, that's okay. Accept them. The meaning of life so Dean is saying the meaning of life meditation at number day 10, soften and flow. Helps me with my pain. Fantastic. Colleen saying we also have more compassion for ourselves and others through meditation. Yes. So there are so many physical, mental and emotional and spiritual benefits to meditation, which I haven't had time to go through today. But just trust that when you practice it, you will notice those things. Coming up. Yeah. Selma is saying meditation has helped with adhd and now she's free from ADHD medication, which is fantastic. In fact, I call this from medication to meditation. Yeah, that's the way we should think about the benefits to the whole of society. Yes, lots of people saying they're feeling better and better from doing the meditations. Kathy in Chicago, I recovered from CFS using the Gupta program. Just to let you all know and be encouraged. And yes, we'd love to. I forgot to say, please do send the thumbs up and the hearts. We always like to see those going across the screen if you're liking and loving what you're hearing and seeing today. Oh, Derek just reminded me next Monday, the 22nd, not the 21st. Absolutely. So our next series of webinars starts next Monday, 22 May. Erica saying, does meditation take a while to see benefits? I've been meditating every day for four weeks and not seeing changes yet. Will it take time when very ill? Yes, sometimes. In rare cases, the meditation is still having an effect. But imagine the pressure in that pressure cooker, what it's releasing, what negativity might be releasing unconsciously. So it's very important to keep going no matter if you don't feel the benefits straight away. Scott saying, I'd love to some tips on sometimes, in rare cases, the meditation is still having an effect. But imagine how to sit comfortably for longer meditations, 30 minutes, plus the pressure in that pressure cooker, what it's releasing, what negativity it might be releasing unconsciously. So it's very important to keep going no matter if you don't feel the benefits straight away. Scott's saying, I'd love some tips on, you know, feel that it's okay to adjust your body as you're meditating. So the first thing is it's very useful to have some lumbar support. So when you're sitting to meditate, if you're meditating for a long period of time, perhaps how to sit comfortably for for longer meditations, 30 minutes plus, you know, feel that it's okay to adjust your body as you're meditating. So the first thing is it's very useful to have some lumbar support. So when you're sitting to meditate. If you're meditating for a long period of time, perhaps have some pillows behind your back so your back is supported. You want to keep your back as upright as possible. Have some pillows behind your back so your back is supported. You want to keep your back as upright as possible, but not rigidly so so you can loosen your body, have your hands, but not rigidly so. So you can loosen your body, have your hands loosely in your lap facing upwards, and just allow your body to feel loose and your lumbar, that's the kind of arch of your back to be supported. Secondly, be loosely in your lap facing upwards. Just allow your body to feel loose and your lumbar be okay with movement. So if you need to move, need to adjust yourself, don't feel that that's interrupting your flow. That's perfectly normal as well. And if you do feel agitated or uncomfortable, once again, I do believe that that is a release because I felt like that when I first meditated, whereas now I can meditate for 45 minutes an hour without having that agitation. So these are often just unconscious blockages being released from our physical system. B is saying, I want to do six months of coaching from Ashok, but haven't quite figured out how to get it. If you just email our clinic@infouptoprogram.com then they can help you figure that out. David saying, do you have a tip to release this physical pressure in the head? If you feel physical pressure, that is the tightness of the very subtle muscles that surround our scalp. You've got lots of little muscles around our scalp. And the way to release that is, once again, regular meditation. But secondly, very gentle head massage. So some of you will know I advocate Indian head massage. That might be a bit rough if it's quite tense, but very gentle head massage can begin to release the tightness in the head. Heather's saying, what happens if you only have 10 minutes? So if you can meditate for 10 minutes as a minimum, that's great. I'm just saying that the sweet spot from the studies tends to be the 20 minutes, but 10 minutes will still give you lots of benefits as well. Georgie saying, how can we meditate when we are really agitated and in a lot of pain? For instance, migraines or severe pms? Or do we need to meditate at other times instead? No. When you meditate, when you have a lot of pain, I would recommend the soften and flow meditation, which is on day 10 of the meaning of Life experiment. And that just helps us to be more mindful and releasing. Yeah. And people find that very powerful. Henrik saying, does meditation help with IBS problems? Yes. Yes, for sure. Ricardo saying, my mind is busier during relapses and it's harder for me to meditate. Is that normal? Here's your rule of thumb. If you're finding it hard to meditate, it's even more important and the benefits will be even greater. Someone who can just sit down, close their eyes and meditate. The marginal benefit for them is not going to be as powerful as if you find it difficult. If you can't sit down and close your eyes and feel relaxed, what does that tell you about what's going on in your physical body or what's going on in your mind? So the harder you find it, the more benefits you will get. And it will also benefit for you to do it for longer. And it feels uncomfortable initially because the brain doesn't want that. The brain's saying, panic, panic, panic. And you're saying, and breathe and meditate and calm down. And the brain's saying, hang on a minute, panic, panic, we're in danger. And only by being in that centred, calm state can you gradually persuade the brain and the mind that we are not in danger anymore. And that's why, Emma, we're sitting down and calming, meditating. So that's one of the secrets of how that works. Kristin saying, is it better to meditate before or after yoga or other exercises? There's a very ancient system set up here which is that when we want to have a process in the morning, we wake up, have some water, and the ideal process is that you do some physical exercise, but only if you can manage. So if you don't have these conditions, you do some physical cardio exercise, get the body sweating, get the heart rate up, so you remove all the stress hormones and cortisol from the system, then you have a shower. The next phase is then yoga. The next phase is breathing and the final phase is meditation. And all of those steps are designed to help you have a deeper meditation, a deeper rest and stillness in the mind. But of course, if you can't handle the physical activity, that's okay. If you can't do the yoga or don't have time for it, that's okay. But just a couple of minutes of deep breathing and then listening to a 20 minute meditation. That's really the core of it. Can you meditate lying down? Ideally, you wouldn't meditate lying down because lying down the brain associates with sleep. So you're more likely to go into a sleepy meditation rather than having more awake alertness. Tanya saying, thank you very much for this explanation. Since two weeks I've been on the Gupta program and it's amazing how it works. I'm curious for the next month. Great. Diane saying, actually doing meditation has healed me along with the techniques of the Gupta program. Fantastic. Marie saying, is meditation in your method? Does it work for electrical sensitivities? Yes. We've had many people recover from electrical sensitivities. And once again, meditation is part of that. Diane is saying, in January, I meditated regularly each day and I saw someone that I hadn't seen in a while. And he said, you look completely different. So confident and relaxed. Thanks for the reminder to do this daily. Yes. And you know, sometimes we do become a bit complacent with our practice. We think, oh, I'm physically feeling better from doing the Gupta program or whatever, you know, I haven't got time for meditation today. And I will say that for the rest of our lives, even once we've recovered from the condition, daily meditation is going to be so important we cannot do without it. It's like brushing our teeth or having a shower. We don't question, should I brush my teeth today, should I have a shower today? It's just a natural part of our day. And in the same way, meditation is the inner cleansing. So we clean our outer bodies, but cleaning our inner minds is the most important thing because it's the key to our happiness, our well being, our relationships all depend on us having a calm mind. So daily regular meditation is so important. And even now, after so many years, I notice if I haven't meditated for a couple of days, I notice that my mind is a bit more agitated night, and I think, hey, that's not the normal me. Ah, yes. I haven't really properly meditated over the last couple of days. And so for the rest of our lives, it's going to be important to maintain our health and our recovery. Constance, I found that deep alternate, sorry, alternate nostril breathing made me a bit more tense than settling me into meditation. Should I just do some deep breathing? Yes. So I'm a very practical person, so not all techniques will work for everyone. So if you can categorically say that you've tried the alternate nostril breathing, it just makes you a bit more agitated, then just do what works for you. Okay? Okay. Just seeing if we've got any more questions about meditation. I think we've been through normal justice saying, should I always label the thoughts in my mind or just in the beginning? So in that little meditation that we did, which was really just an exercise, I got you to label the thoughts. And that is one technique in meditation. So some people do find it useful that at the beginning of the meditation they just become aware and label where their mind is going to. But you don't have to do that. But if you find that technique useful then? Fantastic really. When you listen to the guided meditations, that should just guide you through the process. But if you want to meditate silently, for instance, then when you first start meditating silently without the guidance, you can label your thoughts. And that's a great way of observing the mind. It's a bit like having a spotlight. Do you often find sometimes you might have an insect or something running along the ground and as soon as you turn the light on, it freezes because it knows that it's been found out. So it freezes to hope that the attacker won't see it. That's the animal freeze response that we all have. And it's the same with the mind. The mind is running around doing all its crazy stuff and the moment you put a spotlight on goes, uh oh, I've been found out. There's a big spotlight on me, alright, Perhaps I won't be so busy because I'm being watched now. And in the same way, when we bring all that unconscious stuff that's going on in our mind, that's using up energy because remember, worrying and thinking too much uses up a huge amount of energy, drains us when we put a spotlight on it, then it freezes because it's been found out. And then the whole mind calms down because it's being watched, because we've not identified with it anymore. Because the secret is, the reason our mind gets agitated is because we have a thought, then we catch on the thought, have a thought about the thought, then we have an emotion about the thought, then we have a thought about the emotion and thoughts and emotions build up into a cycle and we get so agitated. Whereas when we practice meditation, we practice the art of separating ourselves and observing our minds not being identified with our minds anymore. And therefore, even if the mind's reacting or doing something, we're like, hey, let's relax. And the mind calms its reaction down because it thinks, well, can't be that important because I can't seem to persuade him or her to get carried away. It calms down and we enjoy the peace of not being an over reactive human being anymore. Francesca saying, a lady from Italy asked, what is the role of genetics in mcs? If everything comes from a mind, then why are there genetic polymorphisms that seem to be important in the metabolization of the genetics of mcs? Right, these are risk factors. So once again, one of the confusions that we're getting in modern science is this idea that, that our genes determine everything. And when they were mapping the genome they said, you know, in 10 years time, we're going to have solved every illness because we will know which genes cause what conditions, and we can switch them on and off or modify the genes in certain ways. The issue they've now found is this idea of epigenetics, which is that actually our genes are not our destiny. Our genes determine, on average between 20 to 30% our risk factors of getting most conditions. Obviously, there are some conditions which are purely genetic, but they are far more rare. But the usual ones like strokes, heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, etc. The genes are anything between 20, 30%, 40% of our risk factor. But the rest is lifestyle and other things that we can do. And the same with it. With mcs, I have seen some research on the, you know, some of the genetic vulnerabilities that may occur. And it could be that the brain makes that decision to defend against chemicals because it knows that genetically it doesn't necessarily have the ability to detoxify. But that doesn't mean that that reaction is the right thing. Yeah, it's still an overreaction. So we still want to change that reaction. Okay, good. Well, thank you so much for your questions. Once again, what I'd love for you to do is right now share this particular feed on groups, Facebook groups, Facebook pages that are associated with chronic conditions and share it. And people may find it useful in terms of understanding what meditation is and how it can benefit. I just want to leave you with this final hope that whatever you're experiencing, I believe that you can recover from your condition. You know, we've helped hundreds of people recover. And whether it's from our treatment or other treatments, there are thousands, millions of people who do recover every year from these conditions. But you don't hear about them because once someone gets better, in whatever way they get better, they often want to leave that part of their lives behind. They want to leave the community and just move on with their lives. Because actually, when they come back and tell people, hey, I recovered using this brain retraining or this, that people say, oh, well, you probably didn't have the condition in the first place, and they dismiss it. And so people think, well, I've had enough of this. So then we don't hear about these recovery stories. But just because you have this condition, it is in no way a sentence. Loads of people recover. You can do it too. And I hope you'll take that first step of just regular meditation as a way of supporting your healing. And also think about brain retraining as well. Good. Well, Please do. Once again, like share and comment. And just one final question, Marie saying I find it sometimes difficult to do the exercises regularly. I'm often arrested by anxiety. And once again, as I said, when the mind is in the anxious state and you are allowing it to calm down, it perhaps doesn't like that message because it's a contradiction. But when your ability to overcome that fear, overcome that anxiety and say no, I'm still going to be peaceful and centered. I'm going to tap into that human spirit which is a core part of us all. I'm not going to allow fear and anxiety to pull me down. I'm going to realize that I have faith and trust in my ability to heal, faith and trust in the ability of love. And when we tune into that, then we are able to overcome that. And it may take time, it may take persistence, but we can all do it. This is all a journey from fear to love. Fear is the core of this. And fear is that over defensive response that we are now learning to observe, to let go of so that we can have our health and happiness back. So thank you so much for watching today. I hope you can join me from next Monday on our webinar series, our three month coaching program. You can email our clinic at info@guptaprogram.com or visit our website to sign up. And good luck with your meditation practice. Thank you and goodbye.