75. The Physiology of Thought

Welcome to the That Healing Feeling podcast. I'm your host, Faith Ashenden, founder and CEO of That Healing Feeling, where we show you how to become a self-healer of mind, body, and spirit through nervous system regulation. Join me and thousands of my other students as I dive into the world of neuroscience, subconscious programming, energetics, and radical self-love. In this podcast, you will learn that your body and mind are meant to heal, and that under the right circumstances, we can experience miraculous healing by leveraging our own internal infrastructure. Let me guide you as we challenge preconceived notions and outdated narratives and dive into the empowering world of self-healing. My intention is that you leave this podcast full of hope and actionable tools. So without further ado, let's dive in.

Hello and welcome back to the That Healing Feeling podcast. I'm so happy you're here for a solo episode. I am actually coming to you with an idea that I had last night in the middle of my meditation, and I don't know if you guys have ever done this, but I was like, oh my God, it's just come to me. I've been blessed with this idea, this topic, and I'm gonna write it down. So I paused my meditation I got my phone out and I wrote it in my notes so that I could record it for you this morning. And I don't usually pause my meditations for anything, but I was like, I just love the title. Okay, uh, before I dive into it, I wanted to just give a warm welcome to all of our new listeners. So if you're new here, welcome, welcome, welcome. Our community has grown so much recently. Our podcast has just jumped up the charts thanks to all of you, my lovely listeners, who are subscribing and rating and reviewing. And I want to thank you so much for doing that, and it truly does mean the world to me. When it comes to podcast content, like, the best way you can support me in creating more content is liking this podcast, subscribing to this podcast, rating this podcast, sharing this podcast. I guess when I say liking, I sound like I'm saying social media. What I mean is rating and reviewing the podcast, sharing the podcast on your stories. Honestly, like, it means so much to me to know that this is actually hitting, that like people are really enjoying it, that it's making an impact. And when you share it, we get more people in the community, and that also is just so, just encouraging and fulfilling for me. So From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much to all of you, and thank you just for being part of this community of, uh, world changers on the leading edge of thought. And, um, I think that it's just a really beautiful place to be. So let's go ahead then and dive into our topic today. And the title of this episode is The Physiology of Thought, and I thought this was really interesting because I rarely find a way to like condense what I talk about into like a title or a statement. It's difficult for me. And I thought that this was a really concise way to get the point across. Okay. It's almost like a formula, like what is the physiology of thought and why is this important? So let's talk about first why this is important. And specifically, you know, my community is— it's really people who are healing chronic symptoms of any kind, whether they're mental, emotional, or physical. And so when you come to me here at That Healing Feeling, you know that what I'm teaching you is beyond the conventional take this medicine and even beyond the conventional take this supplement or eat this diet. Not to say that those things don't have merit. You know that I'm absolutely always advocating for a holistic approach. So of course, You know, we always talk about there's going to be this mind-body component and don't ditch, you know, your amazing diets and detoxes and whatever. But the point is, when you come to me, I'm really talking about the mind element and the mind portion of that mind-body connection. So that's my area of expertise. And even to go and like take that one step deeper, my area of focus is on the subconscious mind. It's my absolute fascination. And everything I do, all of my work, everything I teach is centered around how we can utilize the power of the subconscious mind to physically heal ourselves. And so that's why I thought talking about the physiology of our thoughts, it really ties together everything I'm about, which is your thoughts impact your physiology. Why is this important? This is important because you need to know that you have the power. I think that there's a lot of conditioning passed down from generation to generation that really solidifies the belief that what we need— well, two things. One, that what we need to heal is outside of us, and two, that our bodies are broken. So these are two hardwired beliefs in the majority of society, especially in like the Western world. That are hindering our ability to heal. Again, I'm just going to say them one more time. One, that what we need to heal is outside of us. And two, that our bodies are broken. So this narrative that your body broke itself, it's not like your friend, it's not working, and now you need other things to get back to baseline— that takes the power away. Right? Like, you've got no power if your own body, your home, your sacred vessel, is broken. And if you need all these other things to get through the day, how powerful do you feel, right? So the basis and the foundation of everything that I'm about is you have the power. And I think that in order to do this work, you need to understand that You have to take that power back. That is the foundation by which all this work is built upon. And so that's why we always talk about go deep into your beliefs, cuz your subconscious mind is where your beliefs live. This is a totally different lens than you're probably used to. So if you still believe that your body is fighting itself, hello, autoimmune narrative, and that what you need is outside of you. This work won't work. You can't build this sense of empowerment and self-healing and this brand new identity on these old narratives that don't serve you. So that's the first thing. So the very most important message in all of this is you have the power. And I think that if, you know, an action for you here is if you don't already believe that, that needs to be your starting point. So if you're like struggling with like How do I start? Where do I go? There's like so much information, like what's useful to me? What's going to help me move the needle forward? I'm telling you right now, like if you were my student and my students, if they're listening, they'll know this. The very first thing I say is you need to get rid of those beliefs that are holding you back point blank. Okay. So that's step number one. Um, and I can do a whole episode on that. I really can, but I want to, I want to get through this episode and give you so many different points to consider and hopefully make like a significant impact in the way that you think and also the way that you feel. So this is all built upon this idea of the physiology of belief, that your beliefs affect your physiology. And I think you can see where I'm going with this because when I talk about, um, you know, you having these limiting beliefs and not being able to heal if you're holding these within your subconscious mind, it's because what I mean is those beliefs will literally affect your physiology. If you believe that you are powerless, you won't heal, period. So what you hold in your belief system is so important, and you are not taught to analyze that as a means to heal, as a bridge to get you to where you want to be. So that's what I'm teaching you here with the physiology of belief. But first, It's understanding, hey, your beliefs affect your physiology. Hey, the power is within. And I'm screaming it from the rooftops because I want you to hear it. Your beliefs affect your physiology. And hey, your power is within. And when they talk about the mind-body connection, what they're saying is your mind is the direct line of communication to the body via the nervous system. And if you don't believe that something is possible for you, guess what? You are sending messengers to every cell in the body informing the body that it is not safe to heal. And this happens through the nervous system. Okay, so you are in charge. You are the captain of this ship, and that's empowering. That's step one. So if you do anything, focus your attention on that before you move on to anything else. But how does this manifest physically, you might be wondering? So we have these chemical messengers called neurotransmitters, and neurotransmitters are the physical manifestation of our thoughts. So if you are into spirituality, you might like this. Because it really brings this idea of manifesting into the 3D. So you think a thought, which we wouldn't necessarily define as part of the 3D. It's not something that we can touch, taste, and feel physically. We can, we can argue that, but hey, you, you know what I'm saying. So you think a thought and that thought elicits neurotransmitters, which are physical chemical messengers. So we can see these and measure these, and these chemical messengers are sent to every cell in the body informing the body how to act. So this is very interesting because what it tells us is your thoughts literally inform every cell in your body. Do you see how I'm putting the power back in your hands? Like, you get to decide first. It starts with you. It starts with you, and then it, it's sent to the rest of the body. And the body follows the mind. The body follows the mind. It's listening. The cells are listening and waiting for your instruction. So the problem we see when students come to me is that they're saying to me, I am trying to be positive. But it's not working. Um, Faith, you know, I say my affirmations, I do my meditations, like, what the heck? So here's the thing: 95% of your mind is subconscious. So you might be like consciously trying, manually lifting in a sense, to be positive, to send messages of healing to the body, but the reality is 95% of those thoughts are not in your conscious awareness. And so this is why it's so important to take this subconscious mind lens. You see what I'm saying? Because if you're not aware of 95% of the messages being sent via the nervous system to the cells in your body, how the heck are you supposed to overcome? So you have to become a master of understanding the subconscious mind because those thoughts, albeit below your conscious awareness, are absolutely still informing your physiology. In fact, the subconscious mind is a direct link to the nervous system. So what's in the subconscious mind? You've got your beliefs, your identity, your habits, values, perceptions— huge overarching narratives that are really running the show. So you're not consciously aware how your beliefs, how your identity, how your perception is even shaping the thoughts that grace your conscious mind, you know, in any given moment, but they are the ones that are in control. So we need to drop the narrative that we need to control our conscious mind, right? Um, because that's gonna do very little. The reality is we need to rewire our subconscious mind because those beliefs, those values, those perceptions, everything that lives there, That's driving our thoughts. Have you ever tried to make a habit or break a habit or to think differently when you're in a panic attack? It doesn't work. Why? Because those thoughts aren't in control of the conscious mind. Like, it's not about self-control, it's about the subconscious, which is driving those thoughts. The beliefs are driving the panic, right? The beliefs and the identity and the perception of reality is driving those habits. So it's not efficient. It's not effective to try to use that 5%, that conscious awareness to really change the way that you think to inform your physiology. And so this is where you take your power back and you can really start to examine what's bubbling underneath the surface. My favorite way to do this, and I share this all the time across social channels, my emails, my podcast, my freebies, like, and obviously in HTA, this is actually what I teach. But I'm always telling and shouting from the rooftops that beliefs are the most effective way to do this. Beliefs form our identity, and the identity is the highest level of the mind. So in my experience, shifting your belief is going to be the most effective way to shift your identity, as well as if you change the way you believe about certain things, your habits will just flow. So you don't even have to really try to like change manually these habits, which is very difficult. If you believe something different, you'll just start acting like a person who's different and your habits will flow from that. So I'm really about helping you do things in a more like easier, faster way because— and what's interesting about working on this level of the mind is that we sort of collapse time. So there's this narrative in traditional psychology that it takes a really long time to do certain things like release trauma. Or even like, you know, overcome certain thought patterns. But that's not true when you work on this level, when you work on the level of your identity, your perception, your beliefs, all of that. You can release 20 years of trauma in 30 minutes. You can. I do it all the time in the Health Transformation Accelerator. And I think that's what people love about what I do, because I am challenging the narrative that it has to be long, arduous, and hard. I am challenging the cognitive behavioral therapy narrative that you have to feel it to heal it. I am. And I think we have to be really open-minded as a society to the fact that we understand very little about the mind and these narratives that, you know, I was a behavioral psychology major at the University of Texas at Austin. And when I was studying this in 2009, and, you know, this was all very new, this idea of psychology was new. So of course our old narratives need to be challenged. How much have we challenged narratives within like the scientific field in general, right? And so we need to be open-minded about this. And again, that is a belief. We have a belief that it has to be long, hard, and arduous to change these aspects, including chronic illness. But that belief holds us back. And so we need to be open-minded. We need to really look at that belief, take a lens, a micro lens to that and say, where is this coming from? This narrative that I didn't choose, right? That has just been like handed down to me via practitioners, via experience, via society, my parents, whatever. Um, and I think that's a very important lens to take. And when you are open-minded enough to challenge everything that you believe to be true about your reality, that's where you're going to see change. So this is the physiology of, uh, of thought, right? It ultimately stems from your subconscious mind. And then when you think something, and here's the, here's the kind of kicker, here's the formula. So the nervous system is going to be what receives that message and sort of disseminates that message throughout the body. So the nervous system is very primitive. We share the same nervous system with literally like everything on the planet, basically every like animal basically on the planet. And so it's very primitive and it only understands two things: safety or survival. So if you are thinking a thought, whatever is in your awareness that you are like observing in that moment as you're practicing this, I want you to ask yourself— don't overcomplicate it— I want you to ask yourself, does this fall in the bucket of safety or does it fall in the bucket of survival? And those are the only two buckets it can fall into, really and truly. So if it falls in the bucket of safety, it's going to be sending messengers that support your healing. And that's because from a primitive standpoint, when we felt safe, that meant there was no threat to our survival. There was no lion or tribe, so we could actually rest, we could replenish, we could evolve, nurture, procreate, all of that amazing stuff. So we still have that primitive infrastructure, so we don't need to overcomplicate from a conscious standpoint what our thought process is, and we don't even need to be challenging whether or not this thought is right or wrong. So that narrative is holding us back, and I encourage you to drop that. And instead of using right and wrong, look through the lens of does this thought send a message of safety or does it send a message of survival? Now, if it falls in the bucket of safety, you are golden. Like, you are sending messages to the body that it's time to heal. If it falls in the bucket of survival, your primitive nervous system is sending messages to the body that a lion is literally about to eat you. There's no other interpretation. It doesn't understand like, oh, I'm a little bit stressed that, you know, I might have a flare later, or like I have, you know, anxiety about being in public. Like, it doesn't understand that. It only understands lion. It's that primitive. So this is the lens by which you are going to heal yourself. Strip it back. Now, if you want to take it a step further, you can then start to ask, What belief does this thought come from? And that's where you're doing the root cause work. So I say on social media that, you know, I'm the functional medicine of the mind, and this is why, because I'm really effective. If you work with me, you'll know this, at helping you understand what belief does that thought stem from. And ultimately, we want to clear that belief. The thought is almost irrelevant to me. It's a symptom of the root cause. And it's just like if you're into integrative medicine, you see a symptom and you say, oh well, allopathic medicine would just treat the symptom, whereas functional medicine would go a step further and say, why do you have that symptom? That's what this work is doing. Okay, so think of it as like the equivalent. Like you have a thought and I say that's a symptom of the belief. So let's take it a step further and understand what do you actually believe to be true? And that's how you start to use this root cause approach to clear what isn't serving you in the way that you detox, perhaps bacteria, parasites, whatever. You're detoxing beliefs that are holding you back. And when you do that, you don't have symptoms anymore. And guess what? It becomes easier to send messages of safety to the body. Now, this is where the belief that your body is meant to heal, that your body is not broken, all these things— this is where that is important. And I hope you can see that come together. Because if you don't believe that, if you believe that your body is broken, right, then this whole, like, formula doesn't work. Because even if you're sending messages of safety, you're like, well, it doesn't matter because my body's broken, right? So you have to believe that your body is meant to heal, that your body is fighting for homeostasis, and under the right circumstances, healing will occur. So it's essentially you get out of your own way and then you believe that healing will happen. So that's the only circumstance by which this entire formula is going to be effective for you, is going to work for you. So there's a lot here, right? Like there's a lot. I feel like I've given you a lot of information, a lot of— a lot to work off of. And I think we can go into like different aspects of what I've taught you here and really start to unpack that. And I'm going to start— I might just do like a bit of a series, if I'm honest, for you and just helping you kind of unpack these different areas. But I want to start by just getting you thinking, like, what do I believe to be true about my capacity for healing? And where, like, maybe where is this holding me back? And the cool thing about this work is that once you clear one belief and that works for you and you see, like, physical healing, because it does. So when you send messages of safety to the body, the body starts to think, oh, I'm safe, a lion's not coming, so I can start to heal. And then because the body is designed to get into homeostasis, it will. And what that means is balance. Your body will get back into balance and it will start to— that, that is healing, right? So inflammation is an insult to homeostasis. It's an insult to the balance. And inflammation is what underpins almost every chronic condition. So this is how this all comes together, right? So you can see how I'm painting the picture. You can see how this is important. And you can see how if you don't believe that your body is meant to heal, if you don't believe that you can get into homeostasis, it's not going to work. And there's a lot of beliefs. I mean, I could, I could list them for you, all the beliefs that could hold you back. And maybe I'll do an episode on that, all the beliefs that could hold you back from this working. But the most important part of this that I want you to understand is you have to get out of your own way. And like, people don't want to hear that. They're like, what the hell, Faith? And if you're my student, you know they don't want to hear it. But you have to get out of your own way if you are to heal yourself. And what that means to me is you have to release these attachments to the beliefs that have formed your identity. I'm going to say that one more time. You have to release the attachment to the beliefs that have formed your identity if you are to heal. And shifting your identity from chronically ill to healing, or, you know, God forbid, healed, is hard and it's holding you back. So there's a lot to think about. There's a lot to unpack. If this resonated with you, I want to encourage you to go to the link below, which is my free webinar. It's gone completely viral. We've had tens of thousands of people, and by the time you listen to this, maybe even more. Watch the webinar. It's a 90-minute free training on how to Use your subconscious mind in order to overcome chronic illness and anxiety. And it really goes even deeper into like what I've taught you here today. It really goes deep. Okay. And it breaks down the actual steps of how to do all these things. So if this resonated with you, go to the link below and register for the webinar. I really, really encourage you. I've never done anything like this. Like I've never actually done a free training so in-depth and we have had people have experienced so much spontaneous healing from watching this webinar, from healing food intolerances to healing gut symptoms to healing acne to healing OCD and anxiety. We really had people experience what others would call miraculous healing just by watching this webinar, which, like I said, is absolutely free for anyone who clicks on the link below. So go ahead and take a look. Click on the link. I've also included a free PDF in there worth $100. It's a textbook of some of my favorite nervous system regulation habits. That are really tangible. Each page is a different exercise that you can use. It could, you know, literally fill your entire year and change your life. So all of that is free when you click on the link below. I would love, love, love to see you there. I would love, love to hear your testimony of healing through it. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast and for being here. You already know that I'm going to say if you loved this episode, please share it on social media. Go ahead, rate, review the podcast. And other than that, I love you so much. Thanks for being part of this community and have a great day.