How much learning and analysis makes sense?

Hi everybody! Hi there! Welcome to Bend and Snap Active People, getting back on track, getting back out there doing what we enjoy, doing what we love. Welcome to Tuesday evening session. I used to call this session off-trail training. I'm not sure why I stopped doing that. It was mainly because in the beginning the group was more directed towards trail runners, and we still have lots of trail runners in here, so it still would make sense. So welcome to anyone that's newly joined us, thank you for joining, it's lovely to have you here. Every Tuesday, half 7, I come and chat for around 25 to 30 minutes. And I mainly focus upon chronic pain and chronic symptoms, which for many, many people are coming from the brain perceiving danger, which is classed as a mind-body symptom. So that's my area of focus. And for today, the title of the session is How Much learning and analysis makes sense, because for many people who are already in the mind-body world, who've got an understanding about these symptoms, they literally could teach this stuff. A lot of people that I work with, they are what I would consider experts. They have expert knowledge in this area of understanding. They've come to the understanding that We can experience very, very high levels of pain and high levels of symptoms, but they many, many times can find no fault with the body. We now have an explanation for this, and it's not a new explanation, it's an explanation that's been in the world since the 1970s, but it's taken all of this time For this explanation— oh, I can't speak, I get so excited— for this explanation to begin becoming more mainstream, and that is happening now. We now have many, many practitioners that are specialising in what I call, and what I've been trained in, neuroplastic symptoms recovery coaching. Okay, that's a tongue twister, but ultimately I will call it mind-body symptoms, TMS, which is what Dr. Sarno, the original doctor who discovered this approach and discovered this reason for why people suffer with chronic back pain, right back in the '70s. But I don't want today's session to be all about that, so I'm going to assume That you have a little bit of background knowledge on this, so I'm gonna mainly focus the talk on at what point does the learning need to stop, and the analysis, and the figuring it out, and everything else, in order to help us to actually make progress and get to a recovery and begin seeing progress for ourselves. And I really do apologize because I'm not sure with Facebook why the comments don't pop through. So I'm not ignoring you, but thank you for being here. And if you do have questions, I will look back afterwards because for some reason they pop up afterwards but not during the live. Um, so the question is, how much research and analysis is enough? Okay, because there are so many people Who spend a lot of time, a lot of years, I spent 6 months before I began actually doing anything different, learning, listening, listening to all the books, listening to all the podcasts, the recovery stories, really, really studying and getting my head around everything, but I continued to do what I always did. So all the knowledge and all the learning and all the studying in the world does not equal recovery. You can understand this stuff, you could teach this stuff, but not make any progress for yourself because it's not, that's not what gives you the result. So, so many people spend so much time researching, they may have had an injury, they may be looking into their health, they want to get the exact accurate diagnosis, lots of investigations, lots of tests, lots of scans, lots of blood tests, lots of assessments, lots of different appointments with lots of different professionals, also doing the studying on neuroplastic symptoms, learning all about that, reading all the books. Anyway, I get it because I can understand why it becomes an intense thing that, that you can kind of not stop with. So I do understand why, because I did that for quite a long time in the beginning, and especially if you've had a lot of history with a lot of different experiences with your health, And some may have been genuine scare events, genuine, genuinely, you know, to the point where it makes sense that, that we've become on high alert and we've become quite vigilant and quite cautious to over-analysing everything. But ultimately, if you are experiencing ongoing chronic symptoms that are preventing you from having the life that you once had and the life that you would desire, Then, and you do find yourself over-analysing, and even if you are over-analysing learning about this approach, which you know is the only one path that has given so many people relief and recovery, if you found yourself being stuck in over-analysing that too, then hopefully this session will speak to that, because all of that stuff Despite whatever you're doing, and despite whether you are having ongoing symptoms and ongoing sensations and pains and whatever it might be, then that doesn't mean that your body is broken. We cannot go down that path of, well, the body's broken. We can't make that assumption just because you're having them that that is the only Reason, we now know very, very differently, and we now know that there is an approach that makes so much more sense, and the approach has a happy ending, which seems unbelievable when medicine may believe otherwise. So, as always, I encourage you to do the assessments. There's many self-assessments I can send out Screening tools to anyone who would like help with that so that you can do your own self-diagnostic. I can help, of course, I'm happy to help anyone, um, because it doesn't mean necessarily that there is an issue and that your body is broken. Yes, it means that the nervous system is in fear or sensing something as a danger, But it doesn't mean that you're broken, so just to reiterate that. And also— hi Emma, it is working, woohoo! Hello, thank you for being here, Emma. I love it, you come every single week and I just think that that's lovely and so supportive of you, Emma, so thank you so much for being here and I hope that it means that, because you keep coming back, I hope that means that you hear something that's helpful in these sessions. So yeah, the one thing that's guaranteed is that the system is, the nervous system, the brain— I've got such an itchy nose today because I've been hula hooping in the, they call it an orchard, and there was loads of like little midge flies and I was getting quite itchy. Sorry, I've just knocked the microphone. Hopefully that's still working. And I've come back with an itchy nose. Anyway, so all pain, all symptoms are all created in the brain, but that does not mean that there is a fault with the body. Okay? The brain can initiate any process within the body, any kind of pain, any kind of symptom. Regardless of whether the body is at fault. And it obviously, it does the same if the body is at fault too. So it's our job to distinguish the difference by analysing and assessing how the symptoms behave, because it's very, very easy to identify something structural compared with something that is a neuroplastic symptom. It's very easy when you know how. So don't struggle. If you don't know and you're doubting, get help. So sometimes, back to the title of the session about how much learning about this stuff, how much analysis makes sense, there is no amount of research for some people that will help them to make a final 100% decision on whether it's relevant to you or not. You could spend than the rest of your life learning and analysing and researching this stuff, every book, every video, every podcast, and so on, and you might not get to that certain point, the 100%, like, for me, I got there pretty quickly, I spent 6 months probably just sort of exploring and learning until I thought, hmm, but I wasn't 100% certain. I wasn't 100% certain that it would help, and I still thought, well, I'm not sure. I didn't have all the confidence in the world, and that's the thing, and I think so many people get stuck because they're kind of waiting for that to move forward, and you can't move forward Oh no, let me get this right. If you're waiting for that moment to begin moving forwards, to the moment when you feel finally ready, that then you'll move forward, that, oh, I believe I'm going to go with this approach, I'm going to have a go at doing this, then you might never begin. You might never begin because being ready, like, I'm ready, Is a decision, is a decision that you make one day. It's not necessarily a feeling, like I feel ready. If I wait until I feel ready for something, I'd never do it because I never feel ready. It was like that with doing like a marathon or doing an ultramarathon or doing a 100-mile ultramarathon or going back and doing something again that I'd done before numerous times. I never felt ready. Because feeling ready is not a feeling, that sounds weird, feeling ready, because it's the word feeling, but actually it's just a decision that you make, yes, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. So I hope that that sort of like helps you to realise that you're not waiting for a special moment or anything. You don't need to be completely confident, you don't need to be completely 100% certain, it's more important that you've got to a point where you've done enough of the research, that you understand enough about what's happening, and then at that point the research can, you know, it can kind of like settle down and stop because it can become a feeder of the actual issue itself, and it can end up being counterproductive eventually. In the beginning, you need to kind of spend a bit of time learning, but then you don't want to end up getting stuck down rabbit holes and comparing everything and then over-analysing things, because you might never get to that certainty point So you don't want to get stuck and stay on hold where you are. So yeah, when that— there'll come a point where you can make the decision where you've just got to say, I've done enough now, I've done— I've read enough, I've got enough information, I understand. Now it's time for me to stop learning more and this and that and actually start doing, implementing. And that was the point where I made the decision, I'd listened to The Mind-Body Prescription, probably, I didn't count how many times I'd listened to it, but I must have listened to that same book at least 4 times, and then lots of other things that I listened to, and other books, and other podcasts, and other websites, all sorts of stuff that I could find, and then I got myself to a point where I didn't feel, I wouldn't say I felt ready that I was going to be going for it, but I just made a decision that I was going to try what was recommended. That's the implementation stuff, doing it different, responding to things different. Made those decisions which I shared in last week's session about how I made the decision that I'm no longer going to the doctors, I'm no longer gonna label myself with any medical diagnoses. The diagnosis was dropped. I'm not labeling myself with that. I'm not going to treat my body anymore. I got rid of all of my devices, all of my pain relief devices. I had so many. I had TENS machines, spiky mats, spiky balls, rolling pins, special seats, footstools. It goes on and on and on. Creams, lotions, potions. I just had a whole host of things, and so that was the implementing for me. The implementation was, I'm no longer going to talk about this, I'm no longer going to put attention on it, I'm no longer going to do many things which I was doing, so I really went all in with the implementation, and then I made the decision to have a go at doing the The page of rage, the journal, or the scribbles, it wasn't really a journal, I'm not really a dear diary girl, but long story short, I had a go at doing things that I'd not had a go at doing before, that I would have pushed away and been like, oh, no way, I'm not doing that, that just seems crazy, but because I'd spent all this time doing the learning, doing the analysis of all the information that was out there, I got myself to a point where I made the decision to move forward and do things different, and all I can say is this works. I've seen it work for so many people in so many different scenarios, in so many different symptoms, so many different— and bearing in mind that it's only really been just over 2 years that I have been doing this stuff, and that it was only in January, just over 2, maybe 2 and a half years, that I first found out about Dr. Sarno. And wow, everything that I've achieved personally and helped other people achieve in that short space of time is phenomenal. So, and I'm early into this journey, and it's incredible the differences that it's making for the clients that I'm working with, bearing in mind that I was coaching people before I even knew about this, and also getting— helping people to do really, really well with their physical, like, athletic achievements. And then when I brought this in, I was seeing my clients getting results quicker than me in the beginning, Because we're all different. And anyway, that's a long story short there. But what happens then is your confidence grows through experience. You respond differently, and eventually, yeah, you might need to repeat that, you know, many, many times, but eventually you will get a different outcome. You really will, because this stuff really works. And It's like a gradual shift in the mindset, gradual shift in how we respond, gradual shift in then what will happen with symptoms. We're not even focusing on them or thinking about them, we're just letting them do, knowing Um, what they're going to be doing. I'm hoping that this is working because it says action needed, and I don't know why it did this last week, didn't it? Um, I'll dismiss that. Um, yeah, so we're looking at, um, moving, yeah, from an intellectual understanding, like, in I understand intellectually that this makes sense, that my brain can protect me by alarming me with back pain, for example, even though there may not actually be a defect with my back, like structurally. I know that's possible, I know that my brain can do that in order to protect me, It can do that for many reasons. If it senses that there's a danger to me, it can do whatever it chooses. It can give me a migraine, it can give me ear pain, jaw pain, stiff neck, leg ache, foot ache, it can give me any, anything. It can give me diarrhoea, stomach pain, and so on and so on and so on. And we've probably all had real-life examples where we have felt, for example, something sad has really emotionally hurt us, but we feel sick. That's a really simple example, but we all have experienced neuroplastic symptoms in action— mind-body, the connection. In response, we've all had maybe a moment where you've felt embarrassed and you've blushed and the, you know, you might have gone a bit red in the face. Again, it's an example of a mind-body, how the mind and body are connected. So, who's ever had a headache, a convenient headache that's got them out of doing something that they didn't want to do? Being invited to this, you know, party that I really didn't want to go to, and, oh brilliant, what a bonus, I got a migraine, that kind of thing. But we've all experienced this stuff. Mine used to be the typical stomach, upset stomach before exams, I always had that. I mean, at the end of the day, how can an exam do that? Because mind-body is connected, and if my, if If there's a, you know, the brain will protect us with whatever it feels necessary, and it doesn't mean it's going to get it right, it doesn't mean that always that there is a real danger or a real legitimate danger, it would rather play it safe, even though it doesn't feel like it's keeping you safe, it feels as though it's destroying your life when things are really difficult. But when we've got this understanding, then we can implement a new approach and change the future for ourselves, which is possible, and it happens all the time for so many people. So it needs to go from intellectual understanding to what people describe as a deep knowing. It's just a, um, it's how deeply, if you were to try and convince me that I am not Joanne Smith, I know 100%, that's my name, like, I just know that, you're not going to convince me otherwise, and it's that type of a deep knowing where you've seen it for yourself to be true. And that can happen in so many different ways, but for me, in the beginning, it happened when I felt a shift in the intensity of the pains that I was feeling, just through doing some scribbling about things that I didn't even ever pay attention to that were on my mind. And so I think for me there were some Um, repression with the rage, the anger, because I wouldn't have actively, um, done that. So that was really helpful. Um, but for some people, like, it doesn't work in that way. They actually notice, like, um, they notice a big, um, They have a big moment where it doesn't make sense anymore how their pain behaves, because once they know, like, different things to look for, um, that they're like, oh, how all of a sudden did I— I'm just trying to think of a real-life example. So it could be lifting something. It could be that every time somebody picks up, um, the shopping bags, They have a particular symptom that comes, but yet they're able to pick up weights at the gym and not get that. I mean, so that it could be a discrepancy in, oh yeah, it don't make sense. I can lift that with no symptom, but yet I can't— and it's this, there's just like an inconsistency. Or it could be that people just have the moment and they just know. So it goes from, well, I've been reading about this, to, I've now started to look in a new direction and I've tried something a bit different and now I've actually— wow, I realise I am okay. I'm actually okay because it just doesn't make sense that I would have a structural issue or a physical issue And for me, the fact that I could run big distances and have the pain never made sense to me, but I just never had an answer. And so it was quite easy for me when I did find this as the actual answer. I was like, wow, wow, everything makes sense now. Everything makes sense. It just didn't make sense that it could hurt more. that pain could be so high when I'm not doing really anything, I'm just relaxing and chilling out, but yet I can go and run massive distance and that don't hurt nowhere near as much from doing nothing. Like, it just— there was always a big inconsistency and that's what always kept me going, that's always what kept me thinking, I'm not sure about this, I'm not sure I kind of believe what Medicine's saying, so yeah. So I hope that that explains it a little bit, and it's it's important really because you don't want to get stuck in the analysis paralysis they call it, don't they? Going round in circles and circles. You just want to get on doing, seeing for yourself, being curious. Trying little things, you don't need to do anything massive that's going to make you feel even more like worried or avoiding things, it's just doing it in a way that feels how I describe, do it as fast as what feels comfortable. Um, no, that, yeah, yeah, that's what I mean, so go as quickly as what feels good, And just, there's no rush, you don't have to be all in there, you'll start to see things, but you won't move forwards with pure research, learning, analysis, You'll be knowledgeable, but it doesn't get you well, it doesn't like make you recovered, you've just got to step onto this correct path and begin taking the first steps, and yes, there'll be— I don't think I've met anyone who didn't have a wobble, who didn't step on a slab and it was a wobbly one and think, oh, this ain't working, Oh, it's not, you know, I mean, I had to, I've had to remain so patient, so patient along the journey, doing the same things over and over and over and getting it. The different response didn't happen straight away, especially with my challenge of sitting pain. Sitting pain is a big one that has been on and on and on and on and still. Patient, patient, patient, and it's so gradual that I'm not even noticing, but things have changed massively over the last 18 months for sure. But it's been so gradual I've not even noticed it, if that makes sense. So it's— how do I even describe that? You don't— how the best way to describe it is getting to the end of an ultra run or the end, the top of a mountain, and not even realizing you got there. Like, someone will tell you, we're here, we're finished. It's like that. That's how I can compare the journey that I've been going on. learning about this stuff, working with other people, coaching, becoming a neuroplastic recovery coach practitioner, all of the learning and all of that, and my own personal journey is kind of like how I remember the ultramarathons sometimes felt. You feel like you're going and going and going and it's just never going to end, and then when you actually get there, you're like, Wow, we're here and you didn't realise you were there? That's my best analogy that I can come up with. So yeah, you might get tripped up, you think you might go off track, you think you might start going like my snow globe, and you might forget everything that you'd ever done, and it all goes out of the window because nobody can have clarity when they've got racing thoughts like this. So, um, but you keep coming back, you keep going back to the clarity, to the, this is the correct path, we're going to keep going forward. That's how your confidence will build, and you just keep going like that. Um, so maybe it is a decision that you need to make. Trust yourself. The decision to implement, the decision to do life. Again, the life that you would be doing if you didn't have all this crazy temporary inconvenience in your life, doing those things, ask yourself the question, what would the recovered me be doing? And then begin with a plan on getting those things in, because ultimately, once you've done all the Uh, question airs and everything, then we know that you're working perfectly, you're not broken, and that's when recovery begins. The moment that we stop waiting to feel ready and we just decide to begin anyway. You've nothing to lose. It's like the, um, there's no side effects to this. The only side effect is Recovery. So this is better than any drug or any medication you could ever have because it only ever has positive side effects, regardless of the root cause. And I've said this in previous sessions, even if we do have some structural too, this approach will soften anything coming from structural too. It can really help that settle. It may not fully eliminate, but it can really help with structural stuff also. So what— let me think of my final words for the evening, final words to finish this session off on a good note. Let me think. I had something and it just sort of like went out of my mind. Begin, begin now. Don't wait for any perfect moment, just begin. And even if beginning is a case of reaching out to me or any of the other millions of professionals in this space, because there's so many and they're all lovely and we all work together behind the scenes, then just even if that is the beginning, reaching out and getting some help on knowing where to start, then do it, do it. Even if the beginning is getting on Audible, The Mind-Body Prescription from Dr. Sarno, the book, do that too, okay? Because like I said, there is no negative side effects, and it's not even just about this, it's about all life in general. So who wouldn't want that for the future? So have a lovely week, and thank you so much for being here. As always, I'll be back again— yeah, I will, I'll be back again next Tuesday evening. So have a beautiful week and I'll speak to you all soon. Bye!