Ashok Gupta explains how the brain's limbic system gets stuck in high alert and how neuroplasticity lets you rewire it. He recovered from ME/chronic fatigue syndrome by retraining his nervous system, showing that consistent practice can reduce reactivity and conserve energy.
we all have a different starting point in life in terms of the factory setting of our limbic system, the factory setting of our amygdala. And that is impacted by, believe it or not, once again, intergenerational trauma. So the ancestors and how whatever they experience, we now know, can pass on. The emotional state of your mother and father at the point of conception the gestation period, so pregnancy, then the first 5 to 10 years of life are probably the deepest imprint of how that impacts on the reactivity of our nervous system. Other traumas that may have occurred. Yeah, so we're all coming at a different starting point in terms of the factory setting of our brains as we move into adulthood. The good news is, and this is what we talk about time and time again, Neuroplasticity. The ability of the brain to rewire itself is real. It's something that scientists observe every day in the brain scans. And so therefore, whatever our background, we don't want to feel a victim of what we've experienced or what we think is impacting on us, but instead be the victor, the victor of our mind. And that involves that consistency of brain retraining. The consistency of regulating our nervous systems. And I've seen it myself. You know, when I first got ME and chronic fatigue syndrome in the late '90s, I was one of the most anxious people you could ever know, right? It was no— if ever someone said to me, oh, one day you'll be super calm and centered, I would have not believed them ever. Yet through regular practice, I was able to go from a completely dysregulated nervous system that was anxious all the time, to the point it used up all energy, to the point now where— and it's— there's always more and more things we can do, but refining, refining, refining our nervous system so that its reactivity to people in situations is much lower, and that conserves your energy.
