Meditation: Starting and Sustaining an Effective Meditation Practice

Hi, and welcome back to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and in this episode, I'm going to be talking all about meditation. What it is, why it's beneficial, how it can help us, and how do you do it? So I'm looking forward to sharing this with all of you because many of you have asked me questions about it, and it's something that I've been practicing for, oh, my gosh, a couple decades. But I've really spent even more time learning about meditation over the past few years, and I wrote about it in my most recent book, the Master your Stress Reset, your Health Book. So I want to make sure to share it here with you on how Humans Heal. And I look forward to any comments or questions you might have. So what is meditation? Because I think starting here is important because a lot of people have heard about meditation, but. But it's like, what really is that and how do you do it in a. In your real daily schedule? Right. So let's go talking about that first, and then we'll dive into the other topics as well. So meditation is a form of mindfulness, really, if you think about it that way and think about it as an opportunity to just get your thoughts into the present moment. Right. Like a lot of times during the day when our mind is taking us sometimes a million directions all at once. Right. This joke of having 30 tabs open in our brain and we're. We're trying to do multiple things at once, and we're thinking about the past and the future and what we're going to do next all at the same time as someone's calling or texting us. And. Right. That. That is the opposite of meditation. So if you sometimes just feel like, oh, my gosh, I wish I could just close all the tabs and, and let go of the past and the future and just be in my own body, in my own. Have my own brain space, I call it. You know, create your own space in your own brain to just have some space for you to process and to catch up with what's going on in your life. That, to me, is meditation. And actually what's happening when we go into a state of meditation is we're actually changing our brain waves. So our brain, right, is a. Is electrical. You know, it's sending electrical signals through our neurons. That's how everything happens in our nervous system is through electricity that's moving through. And so that's why we use an EEG electrocardiogram to measure brainwaves. Right. So if we Want to know how is our brain functioning? We would use an EEG machine. And the EEG machine has really helped us to understand that our brains are electrical and that we have different brainwaves. Now to some extent we can have those brainwaves fluctuate even from moment to moment. But what we find is that certain brain waves, when you have a majority of a certain brainwave, it, it's associated with certain state and function that's going on in that moment as a human. Right? So, so for example, let's start with beta brain waves. Beta brainwaves is when we're focused like right now with, with me talking and thinking and analyzing. This is beta brainwave states. So if you think about it a lot of your day, if you're at work or you're doing any kind of planning or reading messages, then you are in likely in a mostly a beta brainwave state. In fact, beta is also when we're usually feeling most stressed is a beta brainwave frequency. Right. So we can actually measure that. And then if we, if our brain moves from a beta to alpha brainwave state, alpha is a more relaxed brainwave state. And so it's, it's not all the way to delta. Delta brainwaves is when we're asleep, when we're like deep asleep is delta brainwave. So if you're, that's. We also need that, right? We need all, we need some time, our brain needs some amount of time in all of these different brainwave states on a regular basis in order to be healthy. So we don't want to spend 24,7 in beta brainwaves or that's when you know, it really starts to feel overwhelming in our brain and our whole existence. So we want to make sure we get some delta brainwaves. That's why sleep is so important because when we're getting sleep, in fact the research says at least seven and a half hours of sleep where you actually get into this deep delta brain waves for a period of time is when our brain gets to heal and we form memories and our, our brain does a clean out process where it gets rid of cells that are not functioning well anymore. And, and the glymphatic, it's called the glymphatic system of the nervous system gets to work and our melatonin levels are higher and melatonin is very healing. So we need that time. That's why sleep is so important, so valuable. Even though it seems like we're doing nothing, we're actually doing a lot while we're in delta brainwaves. So if you think about between beta which is this, you know, thinking, aware, conscious, it's the conscious mind brainwave state. And then the delta is the sleep, deep sleep state. And in between there's alpha which is more relaxed and there's data, which is a deep relaxation. So maybe more like a light sleep. And when we're meditating, we're usually somewhere between alpha, theta and even delta or gamma brainwave states. So data is this deep relaxation, light sleep. And where we start to have access to our subconscious, what we consider the subconscious. Right? Subconscious is ways of behavior that are automatic. Usually they're somewhat defined by our past. Right. Like what we experienced in our childhood traumas or things we were told in our childhood that created belief systems and the sort of our, our underlying beliefs and decision making that in a regular beta brainwave state we don't even think about. We just some of these decisions we make on automatic. But and sometimes it's a reaction to something in the present moment, right? So if we get triggered by something in the present moment, trigger is when say you're going about, you know, communicating with other humans about this or that and maybe something occurs or something happens and it, and you get triggered. It makes your heart race and your mind race and you might feel upset, you might feel like crying, you might feel angry and you're like wow, why am I feeling so triggered by something that's happening in the present moment is likely because it's tied to something from the past that's in your subconscious that you might not have access to when you're in your beta brainwave state. So when we go into alpha and then data much more relaxed brainwaves. We have access to our subconscious. We have access to becoming aware of some of those things from the past and some of those thoughts and behaviors that may be affecting us and even blocking or sabotaging us in our day to day. So we have access to our subconscious which is really powerful, powerful place to be. That's actually where hypnosis works, right. If you think about hypnosis, it's taking a person into the state of brainwave states so that there's access to the subconscious so we can create change in behavior. And so you can actually access that without hypnosis by using deep meditation. And you can also access gamma brain waves, which is gamma brain waves is a very creative state. Sometimes you're having a lot of insights and creativity. Again, it's allowing you access to, I think of it as your true self, your Creative, passionate self. And it allows you to get, you know, get even more done because you have this different brainwave state that is actually close to flow state. But when you hear about something in a flow, someone in a flow state, it's actually on the border between alpha and theta. So this flow state is right at where alpha and theta brainwaves. That's when people feel in the flow state, which is this ability to make decisions and also have creative insight at the same time. So a lot of people, a lot of athletes or high performers are always trying to get themselves into that flow state because that's where they can perform at their best. And so practicing meditation allows you to practice moving between these brain states, even if you think about it like that, right? If you, if you think, wow, how do I, how do I utilize all these different brainwaves to my benefit? Well, then we need to practice moving between them. We're very used to being in beta. We know how to do that very easily. And hopefully we know how to get to delta and get good sleep. If not, we want to practice that. Right? How do we help our nervous system get to delta sleep state? And then we can work on how do we help our nervous system get into alpha, theta and even gamma brainwaves so that you can get the benefit of all of all of those. And as I've mentioned, by being able to get into these brain waves, we actually can do a lot of healing of our nervous system. That's a key point, is that our nervous system can heal. For many years, we thought we didn't know that our nervous system could heal. We thought it was just set in stone, but that's not true. We know the nervous system can heal. It can recover from traumatic brain injuries, from emotional physical trauma. It can recover even from degeneration in many cases. Now we're seeing people recovering from dementia and Alzheimer's and other forms of cognitive issues. And so we know the brain can heal. There's something called neuroplasticity, which means that the nerves are growing new pathways. And so we can, we can teach and train our brain to have new patterns and let go of the past essentially. Right? We don't even know what we experienced in the past is influenced the way our nervous system is functioning today. It doesn't mean that we as a human existing with this nervous system, are stuck with it that way. If we start to realize, wow, I would like to experience something different in my nervous system, then all we need to do is start using the tools to help us heal it and change it. And so that's the thing is I would ask you, is, are you, are you wanting to create change in your life? You know, are you wanting to experience less anxiety, depression or any other mental health issues like OCD and others? Are you wanting to improve your mental focus, your sleep, your energy levels, your just the way you feel in your body? Maybe you want to decrease your pain because pain is also associated with when the nervous system is, is not able to move the brain waves. And so if you're experiencing either physical pain or neurological pain, migraines, headaches.

Tingling, numbness, scalp pain.

Even along the lines of seizure disorders, so many different possible symptoms related to the nervous system. And if you're like. And tremors, if you're like, oh gosh, am I just stuck with this for the rest of my life? I would say not necessarily. Because now we're having more and more tools to help us heal. And I look at it as part of our stress recovery. We know that it's the stresses of psycho emotional physical stresses, as well as stresses from toxins, stresses from our diet, and stresses from other injuries and infections that cause inflammation in the nervous system. And that's what disrupts the neuro signaling and the ability to use our brain waves to go from one brainwave state to the next. When there's more inflammation and toxicity in the nervous system, it makes it harder for us to be able to shift our brainwave patterns and it makes it more likely that we're not going to feel good. And so that's sometimes the biggest challenge is right when you don't feel good. Right when you might be brain fog and tired and anxious is exactly when your nervous system needs you to help it heal. And so if that sounds familiar to you, I just want to encourage you to know. Okay? Yep. I know it's hard right now, but even a little bit, the research is showing even if you start little by little, you can see benefits. And so I like to. There's many tools to do this. Meditation is a very powerful tool. That's why I want to share about it today. So a lot of times when we think of meditation, we think of, you know, say someone who is sitting with their legs folded and their eyes closed and every. They're in a room by themselves and they're, you know, they're focusing for hours on meditation. Right. And so you think, oh my gosh, I can't do that. First of all, I don't know how I could sit with my legs folded, let alone how I could get hours of a day to myself. And so it ends up feeling impossible. And a lot of people just give up. And then they, and then if they try, sometimes people try to meditate and they go, okay, I'm going to sit with my eyes closed. And then what happens is right when we first start and we start to say, okay, I'm going to meditate, but then I just close my eyes, a million thoughts flood in, right? Because our brain is still in a brainwave state. Beta brain waves, it hasn't gotten yet to calmer brain waves. So when you first start meditation, of course your mind is going to flood you with all the thoughts of beta. And so you want to start slowly and you want to be aware of that and be gentle and patient with yourself and your nervous system and be like, okay, nervous system. I know right now we're really good at beta brain waves. And at first what I find is if a patient's struggling with, with that, you know, the first few minutes of meditation, sometimes first we need to calm the nervous system other ways. Like we might, before even engaging in meditation, we might start with just practicing deep breathing, a couple deep breaths. We might start with supplements like magnesium. Magnesium threonate, for example, helps to calm adrenaline levels. So we start to already downshift the nervous system. Magnesium. If we drop that adrenaline, things start to calm. If we take deep breaths, we're signaling to the vagus nerve to create calmness. If and if we. Sometimes we need to take some serotonin support, some GABA support. So serotonin support would be 5 HTP, GABA support would be GABA and theanine. And you start to create calm in your nervous system. We start to get out of stress mode already into a more calm state in your body. So you might have to start with some of these things that are gentle tools and there's many, many others that you could potentially use to start to calm your nervous system and to drop the inflammation. As you drop inflammation in your body, you drop inflammation in your nervous system. So taking inflammatory foods out of your diet, balancing your blood sugar levels, working on your sleep, right? So we start with what I call care, like clean eating, adequate sleep, recovery activities and exercise. And we start to calm things. Then we come back to, okay, now can we how does it feel to be meditating? And so what? And again, being aware that as soon as you sit and close your eyes, your mind is going to give you thoughts. The key with meditation is not. It's not that you're not supposed to have thoughts. I Definitely do have thoughts when I'm meditating. And, and when you get into theta brainwaves, you'll even have very creative, insightful thoughts. So it's not about not thinking, you're not doing it wrong. It's that you're becoming more aware of your thoughts. So instead of like, usually when we have a thought, we just run with it. It's almost like a dog on a leash, right? As soon as the, the dog has a thought and you're holding onto the leash, you're being drunk by the dog, right? It's just running after it. And so what happens is instead, as we become more aware of our thoughts and we realize we don't have to react to it. So now you might still have the dog on the leash giving you a little tug. But then you can say, ah, no, we're not going to go right now. We're going to wait. We're going to just sit here and be aware and notice, right? And so you start to be able to go, oh, I feel the little tug of a thought, but I don't have to act on it right now. I can act on it later if I want to, but I don't need to do it right now. And then little by little, as you practice, right? This is why we call it practicing meditation. You'll, you'll not even as you show your nervous system, hey, I want to go into these more calm brainwave states, you're even less likely to feel the tall gum, the leash pulling on you. You're of the thoughts, right? You might, you might be able to more quickly be able to go into.

Alpha and theta brainwave state without it feeling like there's so many things pulling you in a million directions. So this is why it's a matter of practice. And as you practice, just like anything, right, if you're going to learn to play the piano or the guitar, or you're going to learn to dance or whatever you're going to learn to do, you name it. Even if you're going to learn a game on a computer or anything, it takes practice, right? You don't. It's not like you're going to be a pro the first time you sit down. And you don't even have to sit down to meditate, by the way. Some of my most favorite meditations are moving meditations where you could be standing, you could be doing other activities. You could be meditating while doing the dishes, while taking a walk, while being outside in nature, while being around other people. Actually, you could meditate I've been in conferences where I'm meditating in a room of 1500 people. And I want to mention that some of my greatest insights and and passion about meditation has come thanks to Dr. Joe Dispenza. So I want to mention his work and if you're interested, definitely go check out. He's written many books and has many meditations online and retreats where you can go for week long retreat to learn some of these more advanced techniques in meditation. And to me again, I was meditating for many years and then when I went to the first time learning Joe Dispenza's techniques of meditation and to his week long retreat which now I've attended two week long retreats and a follow up advanced retreat. It took my practice of meditation and my and my ability to see and experience the benefits of it to a whole new level. People are experiencing such healing from this meditation. That's why I feel so strongly that I want to share it here on how humans heal and really help you maybe understand better how this could benefit you. So this is me sharing my view and my experience and the way I think about meditation based on all the research I reviewed and and my experiences as well. Training with Dr. Joe Dispenza are you ready to discover your unique stress type? We're all affected by stress, but why fight it when you can master it? Take my free online stress type quiz today and conquer your burnout. We'll measure your energy, sleep, mood, focus and body to determine how your body is built to deal with stress. Then we'll work together to take precise action to help you get out of stress mode and become resilient to it. It's time to master your health. Let's go. I'm hoping that makes more sense, that there's many different ways. I've also done trainings with the John Kabat Zinn form of mindfulness called let's see, it's the. It's more of a mindfulness training. Mindfulness behavior, you know, techniques and those I also recommend. If you'd like to also read what John, John Cabot Zinn teaches about mindfulness is really powerful. And that's where he even will go into more of these other ways of experiencing mindfulness beyond what we even might think of as meditation. Mindfulness with eating. How do we become more mindful in the moment as we're taking a bit of food and putting it in our mouths? Even before we put it in our mouth, how does it smell? How does it look? What's that whole Sensing, experience when we eat and put it in our mouth and how do we taste it? This is being in the present moment with our eating. And as we do that then we're stimulating our digestion and we're having more presence with our eating and our body's ability to take in food and take in nutrients. So that's another experience example of mindfulness, mindful eating or mindfulness when we do other activities during our day. This all helps us get in out of being beta brainwaves into more like alpha and then even theta and gamma brainwave states. So when.

When all, when doing this again you have access to subconscious and that also gives you the ability to create change in your house, in your life. And this is why I think so many people and so much research is showing such a difference for all these different health issues, not just even the nervous system, by the way. We're seeing people who are able to reverse cancer, turn off chronic viral infections, improve their immune system.

Improve their digestion, turn off autoimmunity, you name it. So, and I'll put some references to research with these episode notes. But there is more and more research showing the benefits of meditation for our whole health and our longevity, I think. And so I really encourage you to just start wherever makes sense for you. I'm going to show you an example here in a minute of how to get started with meditation. And, and just there's no one perfect way. You can also get access to many free resources when it comes to meditation through apps. There's meditation apps, there's websites that offer meditations, there's books, there's trainings out there. So I encourage you to see what resonates with you and then just explore. What does this look like for you? It's not one size fits all. It's got to be what works for you and what feels comfortable for you to start with. And so in terms of how well it's the kinds of amazing things that meditation is doing, I wanted to point out that there's research and this is the research institute that is correlated with Dr. Joe Dispenza called the Inner Science Research Fund. They've been researching meditation the past few years, including regarding Covid. And what they found is that meditators, people who meditate on a regular basis, are able to more able to fend off COVID virus and recover faster when they do come down with COVID virus based on using meditation. And so they looked further and they said, well, what's happening there? Why is it that people who meditate on a regular basis have this ability to protect themselves from COVID virus particularly. And what they found is that when people meditate, they are more likely to produce a protein called Serpent A5. And Serpent A5 is a protein that blocks the ability of COVID to get into our cells. So usually even when we're exposed to Covid, it has to get into our cells to start causing symptoms and problems. And when we have this increased amount of serpent A5, we block the virus from being able to get into our cells. And that's why people are more able to prevent COVID infections and recover faster. So I'll share the links to that research as well. But that's even just, I think, the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the power of meditation. If it has the ability to increase Serpent A5, that means to me that it has the ability to increase many other factors in our immune system to help protect us from likely many other viruses and infections and to help us heal and many different ways. And so now I'm sure continue to research meditation and all the different other things, ways that it benefits our health. But to me, there's so much research now that it's. You don't need to wait for more research. Might as well just start benefiting from it. And by the way, some of the same techniques that are used in meditation also crossover and are used in other types of therapies, such as I mentioned, hypnotherapy already, guided imagery. Maybe you've heard of biofeedback, which I'm also trained in, both of those. And neurofeedback. Neurofeedback is a way to use measure EEG to identify when the brain waves are not optimized and then give your brain feedback toward the brainwave state that you desire. Uh, so it's something you would do usually in an office with a practitioner, or now they have online abilities to do neurofeedback. And this way you can essentially teach your brain how to get into these healthier brainwave states. And in by doing that, eliminate many other health issues, including anxiety and depression. And so that's a powerful way to use some of these same tools that we can also access using meditation. Same idea. We're helping to teach our brain new brainwave states and, and this crosses over to many other types of therapies. But I want you to know about meditation because it's something you can do on your own at home, probably, probably without even having to pay anybody, unless you really want more support and, and help to get even more out of meditation than you may want to pay for specialized meditations or specialized retreats. But to me, it's such a powerful tool that, that we can have access to and, and learn how to do ourselves. So let me show you as an example and then, and then, you know, feel free to reach out to me and let me know if you'd like more help. I'm actually planning to create specific meditations based on the stress type. So in my research, I look at imbalances of cortisol and adrenaline levels. Essentially, when we're exposed to stress of all different types, it disrupts our cortisol and adrenaline. And they study this as well. Meditation helps to restore healthy cortisol and adrenaline levels. And so what I do is I look at specifically, is your cortisol too high or too low? Is your adrenaline too high or too low? And then we can use different care and supplements, herbs and nutrients to get your, your cortisol and adrenaline back to optimal. Because we know when cortisol and adrenaline are optimal, we have more optimal health and longevity. And I believe that this is part of the way that why meditation is so healing is because it helps restore healthy cortisol and adrenaline. Right? If to me, ultimately that's one of the major issues with stress exposure is that imbalance. And if meditation helps us restore healthy cortisol, adrenaline, of course it's going to help us reverse all these different health issues. And so what I do is even look at how can we do a specific meditation based on your stress type, right? So if someone has high cortisol, high adrenaline, how is their type of meditation different? And how can we specifically give them meditation messages that will help them bring their cortisol adrenaline down? Whereas someone who is a blonde and blue stress type who has low cortisol, low adrenaline, they need a different message during their meditation to bring their cortisol and adrenaline up. And so while meditation is good for everybody in general, my theory is that if we can give the meditation to match your stress type, it's going to be even more effective. And so I'm working on developing that and I'll update you as, as I have that available. And so to start with, what you can do is definitely check out my book, the Master Stress Reset, your health book, which is available also audible, and do your stress type. Find out your stress type from the book or from my website. You can get your stress type and from there then I'll be able to teach you what can you do based on your stress type. To get your cortisol and adrenaline back to optimal, including diet changes, supplements, and specific meditation tools to achieve that. Because the more you can optimize and recover from stress, the more you're going to prevent health issues. Not only recover from health issues, but then prevent health issues going forward. Okay, so let's do a little sample meditation here. So you can, all of you who maybe haven't tried this, or certainly those of you who meditate all the time, please join me as well. So what I find is really helpful to start with is find a comfortable place and feel. Be comfortable, whatever that is for you. If it's in a chair, if it's laying down, you can meditate laying down. Find a place that feels comfortable to you. And if you have other people around you, you might want to let them know, hey, I need a few minutes to myself again. Research shows that even short amounts of meditation can have a very healing effect. So it doesn't have to be hours, it could be five, ten minutes. Okay? So even if you have to go in your car and. And be by yourself in your car, do that. You know, find something comfortable and where you're not necessarily going to be interrupted with a phone call or someone asking you a question, right? So you can really be able to allow yourself into these different brainwave states. And then what you want to do is just take a couple deep breaths. And I usually start by just, you know, because sometimes we just have to go, okay, let me take one deep breath. And then you can count, if that helps you, you can count. One, two, three, four, breathing in and one, two, three, four, breathing out, and really feel your breath filling your chest and your belly. A nice big belly breath and breathing out and just bring all your attention to your breathing. Right? So much of the time we're thinking of everything else and we're not thinking about, oh, my gosh, am I actually breathing right? So this is a chance to just notice. How does that feel when you feel the breath coming in, filling your chest, and pressing into your belly? How does that feel as you exhale and your belly comes in and the air comes out.

And you just continue paying attention to your breath. And this is where you might notice other thoughts. You might notice something that wants to distract you. A sound. Oh, I forgot about this. I need to do that later. Remember, you're going to feel those little tugs in different directions. And you just like, say to yourself, okay, I'm going to come back to that. Okay, I hear that fear. I hear that thought. Notice it. Let it Go. You don't have to do anything about that thought or that feeling right in this moment. Just what's important is to teach your brain to focus on your breath first. And you can close your eyes if that feels comfortable to you. But you don't have to. You can also meditate with your eyes open. So there's lots of options here. Okay? It's got to be, okay. What feels right to me in this moment, it allows you to be more connected with your body. And what is your body telling you? What feels comfortable and, and, and right for you? Okay? So even as you're taking nice, deep breaths, you're sending signals to your vagus nerve. That's your autonomic, your parasympathetic nervous system. That's anti stress. So you're already sending anti stress signals. Even if you only get this far, you're already sending calming signals to your nervous system. And you might start to feel like, lightness in your mind, in your head, you might feel a little, almost woozy. You might see different lights and colors. That's okay, that's normal. You're gonna see different, sometimes light colors, feelings in your body, maybe tingling, maybe you shift your position a little bit. You go, okay, where do I feel comfortable? Okay, let me reset. Take a couple nice new breaths again, feeling. And when we do into more advanced breath meditation. Sometimes we use other types of breath work, but I like to start simple, right? Just breathing in and out and focusing on your breath. And you just talk yourself through, okay. Anything else that's going on, let it go. You know, if it's a sound, notice it, let it go. And that's the practice. Okay? So then you just go, how long can I stay in this state? How can long can I just be present with my breath and anything else that pops up, notice it and let it go. And then you can even put your hand on your heart. I love to do this. This is part of biofeedback. We put our hand over our heart and we become aware of our, our heart. Our anatomical heart is also the location of our energetic heart, which is thus the seat of our emotions. And actually the heart is sending so many signals to our brain. So if we can get, get good at accessing our heart energy, we have way more ability to access our feeling, how we're feeling in this moment, and send signals to our brain that are calming, right? And calm those brain waves. So we want to start to learn how to connect with our heart energy. One of the easiest ways to connect with your heart energy is to think about something you love, somebody you love. It could be your pet, it could be. Doesn't have to be someone who's alive. It could be someone from your past, someone who are you. Just as soon as you think of that person or that animal, you just know you're going to feel love. Your, maybe your child, your grandchild, your parents, Someone who you really feel love. Then already you're going to feel your heart, your chest expanding, warmth. Sometimes you feel warm, flushing. Those are normal. It just means you're actually sending these signals to your nervous system and it's noticing, it's like, oh, yeah, we know how to do that. We can feel. Feel the heart, feel the chest opening. This is part of meditation, going into these states, these more relaxed states. But it's also part of biofeedback because when we're feeling love. And gratitude is also another good emotion. It's sending signals, higher frequency signals to the brain that help to calm the brain waves and to create this feeling of love and great gratitude, which are actually very healing feeling states. So there you go, that's the beginning of this, right? So you start to go, maybe I can practice this for a few minutes every day and just allow myself. And then as you do that, then you can build on it. Then you can go into perhaps longer periods of time and you can start to go into deeper, deeper brainwave states like the alpha and then theta and even gamma brainwave states. And to allow yourself to get that access to your subconscious. So you might actually feel, you might have a memory of something from your past. And you're like, why did I just think of that? Well, it's because we opened up this doorway to your subconscious. So it's going to show you information. Sometimes information you've been looking for, questions you've been having. And you're like, I can't answer this question. And then you go into this state and all of a sudden like, oh, now I know why that's happening. And you might start to get more awareness for what you want to do next in your life and the possibility for healing. So you want to. And that's a beautiful place to start to create that for yourself. Right now we have this ability to create health and healing. So that's when you want to start thinking about what do you. What are you wanting to shift in your health? What do you. What does that look like? What does that feel like? How will you feel when you're. When the anxiety goes away, when your mood improves, when your energy gets better, when whatever health issue you have, once it's go melting away, how will you feel? You'll feel excited, grateful, love, inspired. You start to feel those feelings and you connect with it. And now your nervous system is learning these new patterns. It's learning, oh, that's what you want to experience. We can do that. And you start to show your nervous system, we want this. And at the same time it might show you something from the past. And you have the opportunity to let go of, to forgive, to move on to, to not dismiss, but to acknowledge and accept and appreciate and then let go. And so you have this ability. And so even within a few minutes you start to go, wow, I can't believe I can process so much. And then when you're ready to come out of it, you just start to tell your nervous system, I'm ready to come back, I'm going to start, maybe open your eyes, start to become aware of your environment again, start to notice, okay, that was beautiful. Now I'm coming back to my beta brain waves. You can even touch yourself, remind yourself, here I am in my body, here I am in my environment. Take another couple nice breaths. Sometimes you want, I like to take out my self care notebook and write down what did I just experience? What are the creative thoughts and insights that I had? What am I making of this? What are my next steps, steps that I want to take, Right? So you acknowledge when you're in it, but you also acknowledge as you're coming out of it and really appreciate that you have this ability to get into these other brain wave states and to access healing from within. Okay, so thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you'll continue to join me. So please subscribe and I'll also put a link where you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter so that you'll get an email from me on Thursday when the next episode is available. And I can't wait to see you in the next episode of how humans heal.

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