In this instructional video, concussion‑recovery expert David Brimacombe outlines the three foundational pillars he would prioritize if he had to restart his post‑concussion syndrome (PCS) healing journey. First, he stresses the importance of eliminating any sense of urgency, arguing that pressure to recover quickly heightens stress and signals danger to the brain, which impedes healing. Second, he focuses on stabilizing the nervous system—not by obsessing over symptoms but by establishing a calm baseline through daily breathwork, grounding, and intentional mindset practices that signal safety to the body. He explains how subconscious thought loops, formed early in life, can sabotage recovery and offers simple morning/evening rituals (affirmations, visual grounding, breath) to re‑program these loops. Third, he advocates building momentum through micro‑wins: meeting oneself where they are, setting tiny, achievable actions (e.g., stepping outside, retrieving the mail), and celebrating these successes to generate belief and forward motion. He illustrates how a single sticky‑note affirmation can reinforce positive thinking throughout the day. The video concludes by reiterating that patience, nervous‑system regulation, and incremental habit stacking together create a sustainable path to long‑term PCS recovery.
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If I woke up tomorrow with PCS again, knowing everything I know now, I wouldn't fixate on finding the perfect protocol or searching out the ideal supplement. I would focus on 3 things, and those 3 things probably wouldn't be what you think they would be. Hi and welcome to the PCS Resilience Collective. My name is David Brimacombe. And after 20 years and 7 concussions, I learned a lot about the lifestyle modifications needed in order to heal your PCS. In this video, I want to talk about what I would do if I was starting all over again. Let's begin. The first thing I would do is that I would remove all the urgency. I would remove all the desire, the need to heal tomorrow, to heal next week. Because knowing what I know now, knowing that to properly heal from PCS takes time, it takes patience, and to create a sense of urgency in your body is going to enhance the stress, which is going to slow down the process. Now, I think we all at that initial phase of PCS just want to be better, just want to be normal. Of course you do. But that that desire to be that person that you used to be, or that future self, and do so in such a quick, expedited way is only going to increase that urgency. Now, urgency creates a sense of danger in your body. It creates a sense of need, of stress, that is going to then compound those existing symptoms that you have. So removing that concept of urgency creates greater layers of safety. The greater layers of safety you have, the greater potential you have to heal. I always think that if there's an urgent matter, it means something's wrong. So whether it's the smoke alarm is going off, people are yelling, that's a sign that there is danger in the air. So your brain is no different. Your brain, even if you don't tell it that urgency equals danger, it makes that association. Okay? It's going to naturally increase your stress levels, and therefore it's going to make it harder to go ahead and solve those problems, those riddles of your recovery, when you have that additional layer of stress. So instead of urgency, think about your recovery journey as a journey. As a— every day you're going to take one of those steps. It's going to take some time, but it's a more sustaining way to look at your recovery than one that I need to recover as soon as possible. The second thing I would focus on is stabilizing my nervous system and not my symptoms. Now understand that the most common system that becomes dysregulated post-concussion is your nervous system. Now, your nervous system does so many things for you. It regulates the blood flow, regulates your stress levels. It is a master system of your body. But if that master system of your body is constantly dysregulated or sometimes even desensitized, then we have problems. So the first thing you need to do, okay, after you create That sense of calm by not being urgent. The second thing we're doing here is stabilizing that nervous system. We're then going to provide a nice steady baseline. Okay, calm before capacity. What you're going to do is you're going to create a baseline for your recovery. Now, that baseline is going to be, um, breathwork. It's going to be mindset. But those are 2 important things. that are going to help create that safe feeling in your nervous system. So when I get up in the morning, for example, I ground my feet on the floor and I say, today is going to be a great day. I look out the window, which is grounding me, and I do some deep breaths. I'm regulating my nervous system. I'm setting it up so that it can be successful for that day. I'm not worried about my symptoms in that moment. What I'm doing is I'm telling my body, this is how we live our lives. I'm going to set a baseline of stability so that anything that happens throughout the day, I can always come back to that. I can do that at any point during the day, and it realigns myself with that calmness so that if I have the craziness, which does happen, okay, it allows more resilience in my body. Okay, so again, regulating that nervous system, first thing I do when I get up, okay, before any kind of stressful event, before I eat, before I go to bed, okay, I'm creating those cycles of calm. Those cycles of calm are going to go ahead and tell my brain, tell my body that I am safe. The better understanding I have of safety within my own body, the greater chance I'm going to heal. Okay, now about that mindset piece, um, the biggest thing we need to know is that your brain goes into these loops. Okay, so 95% of the thoughts that circulate in your mind are things that have been circulating in your mind for years, for decades. Now it has been said that your subconscious loop, again, which is 95% of your thoughts, has been set by the age of 7 through experiences, through what you've been told, through your upbringing. But that 7-year-old you does not align with that current you. So those thoughts that keep coming into your mind like, I'm no longer enough, I can't do this— guess what? Those are going to limit. Those are going to be a determiner for whether or not you can be successful in your recovery. So what I need to do besides just regulating my nervous system through breath, I need to remind myself and to change that loop that's going on in my mind, change that subconscious loop. And now, how am I going to do that? Now, the easiest thing to do is first thing in the morning and right before you go to bed. That is when your brain is at the state that is easiest to alter that thought pattern. So when I get up, I do my today is going to be a great day. I look out the window, do my breathwork. Then I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to remind myself of the person who I am and who I'm becoming. Tell myself I am safe, I'm supported, I'm healing right in this moment, and then I'm going to become whoever I want to become. And again, I'm changing that subconscious loop, whatever the loop was playing in my mind before. Maybe it was that I was insignificant, that I'm not worthy of the time of other people to help me heal. I'm changing. That's not the case. Again, that's going to limit your potential. So I've changed that in the morning. I'm going to remind myself throughout the day, anytime I have one of those negative thoughts pierce through my mind, stop it, acknowledge it, and then repurpose it with a thought that actually helps me heal. The third thing I want to talk about is start winning through small wins. Okay, so one of the hardest things to understand at the beginning part of a PCS recovery is where do I begin? What do I start with? I have no understanding of what to do next. Now it becomes rather daunting when you read online Yeah, you watch a lot of videos, people talking about how you must show gratitude every day, you must do 10 minutes of heavy breathwork or meditation or whatever it is. And that, for someone who's never done it, for someone who's struggling to get out of bed, that is a daunting task. So what do you do? You need to start small. You need to meet yourself where you are, whatever that is. If you know you need to get outside and go for a walk, but not only do you struggle with your exercise tolerance, but you also struggle with the motivation, you need to do something simple. Put your shoes out ahead of time. Maybe today all I'm going to do is I'm going to go sit outside. I'm going to soak in that sun, feel those rays. Tomorrow, or maybe even next week, maybe I'm going to go to the mailbox and back. But whatever it is, I'm meeting myself where I am. I'm going for a small step and I want to acknowledge those wins. So if I'm able to do that for a week, let's say every day for a week I go get the mail at lunch, I need to acknowledge that. I need to make those small wins seem large. Why? Because in my brain, if I know that's a big victory, then I can scale up next week. I'm acknowledging my own victories. The other big benefit of having these small wins is that I'm of the belief that motivation isn't going to be your biggest ally. It's going to be momentum. Now, how do you gain momentum? So again, small wins today creates belief. I can do it. I can get up. I can go sit outside. I can walk to the mailbox. That's a belief in myself. That belief allows me to do more next week, more next month, more tomorrow even, where I can get up and I can maybe do a small loop around the block. Okay? And that belief therefore carries more moving forward. I'm now creating positive momentum. I'm moving in the right direction. I'm becoming the person I know I can be. But it starts small. You don't need to do it all in one day, okay? So much like we don't need to be urgent in our recovery, we need to start small. We need to believe in the process, okay? One of my biggest insights that I ever had, okay— I knew the power of gratitude, okay, but I didn't know where to begin— was that if I wrote something on a sticky and put it on the mirror. I'd be walking by that mirror 5 times, 6 times a day. Every time I walked by it, I'd repeat what it said, and that was reinforcing that positive belief in my mind. And it wasn't something major. It wasn't like I was writing a page or 2 in a journal. I was simply writing one sticky down, and it changed everything. It changed the way I saw the world because I had that one thought every day. I was going to see it multiple times. It changed all those negative situations and symptoms that I was feeling to hope, to belief, to potential to heal. So you see, if I were to start again today, and for many of you, that's where you are, Okay, you need to reduce that urgency. You will heal, but it will take some time, and that's okay. 2, you need to set up a regulated nervous system— breathwork and mindset. Okay, and the 3rd thing here, you need to start small. Meet yourself where you're at. I really appreciate you taking the time to watch this video. If you want to learn more about my PCS recovery, okay, you can watch up here. Um, the biggest thing here is that we have to understand small steps now equals big recovery later. You are not going to cure yourself in one day or even maybe a week or month, but it starts today.
