EP122: Change your brain, change your practice with Ashok Gupta

Hey, Sachin. And welcome to the Perfect Practice Podcast. It's my mission to use this podcast as a platform to help holistic, heart centered practitioners transform the world. I think we can all agree that the world needs more of what we have to offer now than ever before. And I want to take all the information and all the knowledge and experience that I've gained over the years and leverage the community and the contacts and the mentors that I've had over the years and share some of the most valuable nuggets that I've picked up over those years. I also want to bring special guests on so that they can share their valuable wisdom and knowledge with you as well. Each episode is going to be packed with valuable nuggets of information to help you grow both personally and professionally, all while moving you towards more impact and more freedom. I'm excited that you're here. I'm excited that you want to grow and learn.

So.

So let's jump right in. Hey friends, and welcome to Perfect Practice. Today with me, I have someone who I know you're absolutely going to love. Today with me, I have Ashok Gupta. He is a renowned speaker, speaks all over the world, a filmmaker and a health practitioner. And he's dedicated his life to helping those people struggling with chronic illness. And I know you know plenty of people who are struggling with chronic illness and also those who are seeking their potential. You know, before we started recording, him and I were having a great conversation and it was only supposed to be five to 10 minutes, but it ended up being half an hour because I'm so fascinated with the work that he does. And I know you're going to love it as well. He's a researcher, so he approaches things from a clinical angle from almost a. I don't want to say a skeptical standpoint, but he needs to see evidence and proof that what he does works. And so he spent 25 years studying the effects of his work and the effects of how powerful our brains are in our healing. And he is a firm believer that we are the captains of our ship when it comes to our health. So I'm super excited to talk about things like neuroplasticity. We're going to talk about long Covid because I know that many of you know people who are struggling with that. We're going to talk about fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and discover a new way of looking at these conditions so that we can create a healing solution and platform for our clients and use them as the foundation to springboard their health in new and fascinating directions. So with me today is Ashok Gupta. Thank you, Ashok. Thanks for being here today.

Thank you, Sachin, for that wonderful introduction and thank you for the invitation. Lovely to be here.

Well, I know you've been at this for a quarter century, so I'd love for you to perhaps rewind back earlier in life and let us know where this journey started for you. What got you fascinated with helping people with chronic illness and maybe tell us about your journey as well.

Yes. So like many of us in this industry, we come from our own troubles, our own challenges. So when I was studying at university as an undergrad at Cambridge University, and I'd just gone to India and picked up some kind of stomach bug like many of us do, and I came back, went back into my third year at uni, and everything seemed okay with the work, but I started suddenly feeling much worse as a result of the virus. And I felt my health deteriorating gradually to the point at which it became so bad I could no longer continue with my studies. And I was diagnosed with ME or chronic fatigue syndrome, where I'd look at a book and couldn't even read the words on the page. In my worst moments, I had to crawl to the bathroom. So imagine here I am, a young man, got my whole life ahead of me, and there's a brick wall in front of me, and I'd go from doctor to doctor to practitioner, and they'd say, we don't know what this is. We don't know what causes it. We don't have no treatment for it. You may have this for the rest of your life. And that was essentially the life sentence that they handed to me. And I remember my worst moment almost being suicidal about, look, I can't continue like this. I mean, I describe it, I describe me in chronic fatigue syndrome, like your worst day of flu times 10. That's how incredibly draining it is on the mind and body. And that started a lifelong quest for me to try to understand what causes these such unusual conditions. What's the underlying basis for it? I'm not happy just to have a response of, well, we don't know what causes it, you know? And I met so many people who were suffering, and I made a promise with the universe in that moment that if I managed to even get myself 10% better or 20% better or 50% better or 100% better, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others with this condition because there's such a huge amount of suffering that is occurring. And so I studied brain neurology physiology, alternative techniques, and I came up with a hypothesis as to what I thought caused these conditions. I then retrained my brain in a very ad hoc way, got myself 100% better, and then published some medical research, my medical hypothesis on this condition, and then opened up a clinic to then help others with this condition. And we started with me, cfs, and we suddenly found out that there are so many different conditions that can be treated using neuroplasticity and brain retraining.

Wow. I love hearing stories of transformation, and I love that you committed to. To a greater cause, you know, and. And that reminds me of, of a word in, in Sanskrit called dharma, which is kind of following our life's purpose and our life's passion. So it seems to me that you found that. What I'd love to hear more about is, you know, what, you know, the last 25 years. Just maybe we can fast forward to how you're serving, you know, not only clinicians and other people interested in, in learning your methodology, but how you're serving the public. And especially now with things like long Covid, which probably is another form of chronic fatigue syndrome. I'd love to hear, you know, just how these last few years have been in terms of getting your work out there to the world and sharing it with others.

Yeah, the last few years has really taken off. You know, 10, 15 years ago, when we were first starting out, the idea of that you could train your brain to overcome an illness was a. Was a very alien concept. Whereas now it's the buzzword, it's what everybody's talking about. It's the new kid on the block. It's so exciting to be in the center of this type of treatment and this type of approach. And I call this the new branch of medicine. It's not psychology, it's not physiology, but it's actually not even. It's neurology to an extent. But what it is is actually looking at the underlying reasons for illness in the brain and being able to retrain the brain. So it's an neuroplasticity, and it's going to really revolutionize the way we treat so many different conditions. So it's very, very exciting.

Yeah, that's wonderful. So maybe for those people who may not be familiar with that term, neuroplasticity, we can create an operating definition, and perhaps you can also help us understand who benefits the most. It sounds like everyone can benefit, but who benefits the most from neuroplasticity? Neuroplasticity. So let's create an operating definition and then help people understand who benefits the most.

Yeah, so about 20, 30 years ago, it was assumed the brain was pretty fixed, Right. So we have a very plastic brain when we're children, like sand, it can all be changed, or the neurons can change. And then when we become an adult, the brain's pretty fixed, pretty much our habits, our physiology is pretty fixed. And in the last 10 or 20 years, we've discovered that actually the brain is constantly rewiring itself. It's constantly changing, which is incredibly empowering that we are not a fixed entity. We can shift not only our physiology, but also our emotional world, our psychology, and also even our immune system. And the way it operates, if we can access, we find the right key to the right lock. So neuroplasticity for me is the idea that the brain is rewirable. We are a changeable entity. And of course, any change that we make, whether it's through a psychological intervention or a physiological intervention, often then involves a shift in the brain.

Right.

Something has been rewired to some extent. What neuroplasticity does is say, let's start with that first. Let's go to actually understanding the science behind neuroplasticity. Targeted directly and create accelerated change.

Okay, so the vision that I'm getting is the difference between sand and concrete. So, you know, so our brain is like sand when we start out. It's. It's, you know, moldable, pliable, movable, can run your hand through it and reshape it. Whereas over time, you know, the old theory was that it turns into a solid piece of concrete, which you can't really shift unless you break it. Right? Break it apart. But what you're suggesting is neuroplasticity allows us to continuously learn new things, rewire our neurons, fire them collectively, together, learn new patterns, and we don't have to be fixated on this idea that we can't change. Right. That I was born this way, I grew up this way. We can actually rewrite the story and write a whole new chapter in our lives.

Exactly. So empowering. And it also fits with epigenetics. We used to think, once again, our genes are fixed. The way our bodies and respond to the environment is fixed. No, actually, so many things we do from what we think do up here in our minds. What we think, what we eat, how we move, they all impact on the epigenetic aspects of our response to the environment. And so neuroplasticity fits in with that as well. Another avenue via which we can control the Body.

Okay. So if you're working with somebody, perhaps maybe they've seen a functional medicine practitioner who starts with the physiology first or starts with the chemistry of that person's body first. How would the experience be different since you're starting with the brain first? I'd love for you to compare and contrast those two.

Yes. So I think we certainly are not dogmatic in that, hey, it's just about training the brain and nothing else. Analogy that can help here is we use the bridge analogy. Imagine you're standing on a bridge and there are people drowning in the river below you. You jump in the river, you save that person, and you notice there's another person in the river. So you jump in the river and you save that person and then you set up a rescue center on the bridge and to save more people. But nobody's asking the question, who's throwing these people into the river in the first place? Why are we having to rescue the people? Now, of course, it's a very valiant and important part of treatment to pull people out the water once they're in there. But at the same time, if we go upstream, we get to the root cause. And so in our clinic, what we do is our first port of call is helping people understand our hypothesis. Because so many people to some extent are very scared and frightened by the fact that when they do have these physical measurements and assessments, which are all very important, there are so many abnormalities which can be thrown up. A person can feel that they are, although they want to be empowered. It can also have a disempowering feeling that look all the ways that my body is malfunctioning. And what we like to empower people with is actually this could be a centralized system which is creating all these functional downstream abnormalities. You can fix the system upstream, then a lot of these things will take care of themselves. That's what we often find, is that people go through brain retraining and neuroplasticity and actually their body no longer needs the supplements or no longer needs the binders or the enzymes, because actually it's functioning in a normal way and it's able to look, as you say, self heal or look after itself. Brain retraining starts with this idea of the underlying hypothesis. So what is the cause of this condition at its root level? And once people understand that, then we look at what we call the three R's of the program. So the first R is relaxing the nervous system. Now that's standard, right? We all know that meditation, mindfulness, that can support healing and many of us are incorporating that into our treatment. So that's what we call softening the sand, to use the analogy we went with. So the sand can be a little hard. So meditation, breathing, self regulation, that can soften the sand a bit to prepare their mind for retraining. Retraining is the second R retraining the brain. We look at what specific patterns in the sand have been created and quite indented in the sand that are causing this chronic illness. Let's rewire those neural pathways and that is the core, that is the core of our brain retraining program. And then finally the third R is re engaging with joy. It's often a overlooked area of medicine, which is we know people have much better outcomes when they are able to connect their inner joy. Laughter, singing, music, all of those things can once again support neuroplasticity and support health. But at the core of it, it is literally rewiring those underlying systems that are causing illness. And if I can to help everyone understand, understand this at a deeper level, if I can just share the hypothesis as to what I believe causes so many chronic illnesses. So I love to ask this big question, why are we here? I'd love to talk about that at a philosophical level for the next half an hour. But if we jump down to the science, first of all, why are we here? We're here because this body, this nervous system, this immune system has been developed over millions of years from single celled organisms, obviously plants, plants and flowers, and then invertebrates, vertebrates, reptiles, mammals, human beings. Right. So there's a whole system. And did you know they estimate that we share 40 to 50% of our DNA with a banana, which I find an incredible statistic. Right. So we know that we incorporate a lot of other animals and all their learnings into our own system to adapt to our environment. So the genes in us say I want to adapt to the environment, survive, and so I can pass on my genetic coded information onto the next generation. So we are survival machines. That's the number one clue. Our body cares more about survival than it does our well being. And then in our modern lifestyle, we are exposed to so many pollutants, chemicals, stress, bad diets, etc, etc, etc, so our system feels under threat a lot of the time. So that immune threat is there. The immune system has a background inflammatory bias, so we keep triggering that defense mechanism. Now let's take the example of COVID So Covid comes along and if the body is already in a weakened state, that might be mentally, it might be emotionally it might be physically. Then the immune system gets triggered and looks to fight off the COVID 19 virus. And in most people, 80, 90% of people, it fights it off, the immune system resets itself and we go back to normal life. But imagine if the system is weak, the immune system then over response, over triggers to defend ourselves. And then even once the virus is gone, the system is in hyper defense mode so it still believes the virus may be present. And it errs on the side of caution to say survival is more important than wellness. And therefore I'm going to continue to trigger the nervous system, the immune system, keep the system hyper defended just in case. And the analogy I like to give. Are you Sachin, are you a Game of Thrones fan by any chance?

I haven't admittedly watched the series, but it's because I know I'd be addicted to it, so I'd imagine I would be a fan. But I haven't watched it myself.

Right, so it's. Let's take a fairy tale, any kind of fairy tale. So imagine you are King Sachin and you are leader and ruler of Sachin kingdom, right?

How do you know?

Yeah, there you go, you are already. And your army is your nervous system and the navy is your immune system. And there's a drought in the land, so everyone in the in the kingdom is weak. And then along comes an invading army over the hill. And the army and navy, though they're a little weak, they fight valiantly and they fight off this invading army. And they only just managed to defeat the army. But now the army and navy generals are traumatized and they come to you, King Sachin, and say King Sachin, we fought off these enemies, but you know what? We only just survived. We now need all of the resources of the kingdom. We need the iron, the wheat, the metal, all the food rations, everything needs to go to the army and navy because if we fail, the whole kingdom fails. So the body and all the people in the kingdom are left in a weakened, even more weakened state with less food, less resources because all of the resources are being pumped to the army and navy, which is perhaps logical and rational. And now that army and navy, even when a little child comes over the hill, they start throwing their missiles and arrows and their war machine at this little child walking over the hill because they are so traumatized by the previous war. And so all of the resources are continually being funneled to those defensive responses. And rewiring the brain is suddenly when those generals come to you for their weekly check in, King Sachin now says, hey generals, you've done a fantastic job of defending the kingdom, but actually the war is over. There is no further threat. You can stand down now. That army and navy will oppose that. They'll say no, you cannot say that we are definitely going to be invaded. The rewiring is training that nervous system and immune system. It's not cbt, it's not cognitive necessarily. It's retraining repetitively to tell the army and navy generals that we are safe. You can stand down, bring the system back to homeostasis. And that in a nutshell, is the brain retraining.

Okay, I love it. Beautiful analogy. And I can, I can see it clearly now. It makes total sense. What, what I'd love to understand is, is how is that process happening? So is it through, is that a conscious level, unconscious level? Is it, how do you re pattern somebody's brain? What's the process like?

So we work at all four levels of the system. So we work at a physiological level. So that means we certainly do look at the holistic diet aspects. We look at pacing, we look at the sleep aspect. So all of their physical aspects create a nice base. Then there's the emotional level. So we look at meditation and breathing. We talk about relaxing the nervous system, but the core of it is at the mental and dare we say it, spiritual level, where it is actually training the brain repeatedly that we are safe in respect of these particular triggers. Because the symptoms in the body themselves often become what we call a conditioned stimulus. So the brain thinks, if my body is now weak and I'm feeling ill, we must still be fighting off a virus. And so the brain then triggers the immune system and nervous system, creating those symptoms in the body, which loop back to a hypervigilant brain creating the symptoms. And around, around we go in a vicious cycle. And the purpose of retraining is to persuade the brain that we aren't in danger. The symptoms in the body no longer represent a threat. And that's the main part of the brain retraining. It's a seven step process that we go through. And it's drawn from lots of different areas of brain treatments, even psychology, visualization, parts work, therapy. And it's been a system we've refined over the last 20 years, so we know it works for most of people most of the time. And so that in a nutshell is how we are kind of retraining. But it's also holistic. So we don't just say there's this one trick pony you do, but you have to address all the other aspects of health. And on top of that, the core program is the first 10 video sessions, but then there are another five sessions which are all about how do you stay well? Because we want people to get well and then stay well. So that's looking at what aspects of our personality have actually been involved in us overdoing it, over pushing our bodies. That then meant that our immune system went into this hyperdrive state. Why did it go into this hyperdrive protection mechanism? And that's a lot of the work that we do to make sure that people just don't go back into a 100 hour week job, Retrigger their immune system and defense systems and go back to straight back to where they were before. That's a big part of our work as well.

Wonderful. I'd love to hear if you have a great case study or a story that you can share.

Yeah, it's my favorite story actually. So we had a guy in the New Zealand and he was in his early 80s, I think was 82 or 83 years old. And he started working with our program. And you know, for many people, they may think, well at that age, I mean, how rewirable is. How rewirable is the brain, right? And he had fibromyalgia and he was, you know, bedridden a lot of the time. And he used our program and he healed 80, 90%. Within I think a couple of months he was up to 80, 90% healing. And then within three to four months he was up to 195, 90. I said 95, 97% healing. There's a few more percent to go. And then he happened to contact me and I said, well, that's amazing news. Like what are you going to do to do now? And he said, oh, I'm going to travel the world. I'm going to do all the things that I haven't done in the last 30 years because I've been ill with this condition. And he was so full of energy and enthusiasm. And I thought, you know what if a guy in his 80s can use this program after having severe illness for three decades and go and travel the world, then I believe that everybody has the resources and has the ability to retrain. You know, it just requires that consistency and persistence with it and the commitment. And for me that's kind of favorite story. And with Long Covid, we had a guy who was a marathon runner in his 50s and him and his son both got Long Covid, his son was in his early 20s. His stories on our website. And imagine somebody who's so fit, you know, he used to cycle for 100km a day and suddenly got long. Covid was on the couch for a year, almost a year. Couldn't move, couldn't do anything. Basic things he could only do. And he used our program and his son did as well. And both of them got to about 80, 90% healing within two to three months and they got fully well. And then he went back to gradually and I said to him, you have to be very careful here. But slowly got back to cycling, marathon running again. And that was a good, a great story for us because it just showed that actually if you can find once again, the right key to the right to the right lock, you can train the whole nervous system and the immune system that we are safe. You can switch off and go back to your normal responses. And I believe that actually maybe a quarter to a half of the illnesses that a doctor sees in their surgery, a gp, are actually illnesses of an overstimulated immune system. So that can be anything from eczema, you know, skin conditions, fatigue, chronic fatigue, pain syndromes, sensitivities, food sensitivities, mold sensitivities, even depression and anxiety to a certain extent, but certainly depression, we know 50% of depression is actually over inflammation. A lot of anxiety is overstimulation of the amygdala and the nervous system. All of these conditions can be treated using this type of brain retraining approach. And that's incredibly exciting. And we've now even had people with Alzheimer's and Ms. Begin to work with our program. And we're looking to do clinical studies in that field as well, where once again, for some reason, at some point in someone's life, the immune system has decided to attack the spinal cord or the brain neurons. And why is that? Why is the brain suddenly decided to do that? Can we persuade the brain to switch off those inflammatory responses? And we have a lady in the US who's actually working successfully with Alzheimer's patients. But all of this we want to obvious, obviously clinically document as well.

I love that. So do you have to be a certain age to benefit from this? Can children benefit from it? Are there any contraindications? And do you have to have an illness to benefit from this? I can see the implications of this in entrepreneurship and overcoming, coming our own limiting beliefs and other areas that we may, you know, be held back in. What are your thoughts on that?

Yes, we have many children who are using it in conjunction with their parents. So we're actually developing a program for parents so they can support their children whilst brain retraining. And our program is an online program, so it's a video program. So teenagers these days are very okay with that kind of thing. But even with children, we even use puppets, so I even have some of them here. We use little puppets as well to describe the different parts of our personality and the different aspects of the immune system. So, yeah, it's a very fun program and a fun thing to do. And in terms of. Sorry, what was your second. The second part of your question?

So using it in children and then also understanding how we can apply this to healthy people who may not have a diagnosable illness or even a health condition, but are interested in brain performance and neuro optimization.

Yes. I always say everyone would like to change something. A habit, a limiting belief. And I would say this program is a powerful agent of change. And why is that? Because if we can change a survival response, that's the hardest thing. That is the number one priority of the brain is survival. So imagine if you put your hand on a hot plate or a fire, you move your hand off straight away. It's an instinctual response. Now imagine if we, through brain retraining can train the brain to say, actually that place is not hot. It may feel hot, but it's not. Then if you can change that survival response, then imagine all the other protection mechanisms, habits that the body is going through. And we've had people with addictions, so drug addictions, smoking addiction, alcohol addiction, who've been successfully using these processes for that ocd. Once again, a very deeply ingrained protection mechanism where people retrained for that. Then in terms of neuro optimization, for a limiting beliefs people have about themselves, especially around self esteem, self love, they've used these processes once again to be able to very powerfully recreate a new sense of self in shorter and shorter periods of time. And I think that's the point. You know, we're past the era of five years of therapy, Right. I think that's an old model and an old way of looking at things. You know, my view, when people come to me who've had five to ten years of therapy or psychotherapy, say, look, if no other industry, if something hadn't worked for 10 years, would you continue to along that path? And we have people who come to our program and they say, I've learned more in the last three months than I have in 10 years of 20 years of psychotherapy. Because I've actually not just been talking about what the problem is. But I'm being given tools to rewire my brain to get me to where I want to be, which for us is far more important than constantly bringing up what has happened in the past. Or that can always be useful. But what is the actual way of accessing the brain to create the new you, whether it's a physiological new you or an emotional new you, or a mental new you that you choose?

Yeah, I love that. You know, to me this kind of sounds like similar analogy to what I like to share with my clients is that, you know, we're giving you. It sounds like we're getting a software upgrade. So we've got this amazing hardware and the hardware might need some adjustments, as with the nutrition and lifestyle comes in, but it's really a software upgrade. It reminds me of something Steve Jobs said very, when he was very young, very smart. What he said, he said there's no other industries except in the software industry where you can have a thousand fold benefit over the next competitor because of the way you write code and in this case rewrite code. So I feel like we can use what you're sharing with us to map out a whole new reality for ourselves and not just get incremental improvements in our health and quality of life, but really get exponential improvements in our quality of life. What would you say to that?

Definitely 100%. It's, it's something I always say. Everybody can benefit from brain retraining. Everybody can benefit from even things, simple things like meditation and breathing. We know that meditation rewires the brain. It increases the prefrontal 4 cortex, it reduces the reactivity of the amygdala. All of these benefits can come from these very simple exercises. And this is the future of medicine. And the reason we've not, this hasn't been part of medicine in the last 100 years, 200 years, is because medicine has always relied on that which can be measured. And so the physical body was accessible. So we can measure muscle, we can measure components in the blood, we can measure enzymes, we can measure these physical components. But the brain was a black box. We had no idea what was going on in the brain. And even brain scans today, they are a very raw assessment of what the brain is actually doing. Yeah, it's like hovering over a city and looking at the lights and being able to work out what's going on in that city by the pattern of lights in the city. And so now we're opening up the brain and realizing, wow, actually the brain is the master of all the other physiological responses in the body. And now that we recognize that, how can we access this to change everything? So this is really a revolution in medicine, you know, and that's what's so exciting about this. You know, whether it's pain, whether it's the immune system, all of these things have their roots in the brain. And previously it was thought that pain or the immune system was operating at the peripheral level. So, you know, the immune system recognizes a local trigger, it then acts in a coordinated way. But actually there's so many inflammation flows back to the guts and also back to the brain. A recent study in Israel, which now backs up a lot of our work, they actually took mice and triggered something that created inflammatory bowel disease in the mice. And they measured the electrical signature in a brain structure called the insula, which is what we focus on. They were then able to get the rats back to baseline, use that same electrical signature to re trigger the insula. And when they did that, it created inflammatory bowel disease in the guts of these mice, even though there was no physiological trigger. And that's the first time in modern science that we have successfully proven that peripheral immune system responses get stored in the amygdala, sorry, in the insula. And the image is also part of that. And that by retriggering that, we can create disease in the body. And so if we retrain the insula and get it to reset itself, we can reset, hopefully a whole host of different autoimmune conditions, inflammatory conditions, and chronic conditions.

Yeah, I mean, that's interesting you say that because the insula is responsible for pain processing, for addiction, you know, for self awareness. Right. So that I could see the application of this. If we're kind of reestablishing healthy function in that region, it. It goes far beyond our health. I mean, pain and our wellness is one thing, but then if we can raise our self awareness, that creates a whole new level of opportunity for people.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And of course, we're talking at the physiological level there in terms of the amygdala, the insular, prefrontal cortex, periaqueductal gray, all of these different brain structures. But ultimately what's informing them is our consciousness. And so it just depends which level are people ready to work at. And we have all of that incorporated into our program.

I love that. Do you encounter. I know this is very grounded in science, but it might be on the fringe for people who are very traditional practitioners or people who are stuck in maybe an old way or dogmatic ways of thinking, of how our health and our body and our brain works together. What's some of the skepticism you encounter and, and how do you overcome that? Because I think it would be helpful for us to understand, you know, how we can overcome the skeptic in ourselves. But then, you know, even in presenting this to our patients, the concept that this is actually possible to them, perhaps referring them to your clinic or somebody who's trained by your system, how can we help people believe that this process is actually possible? Because in some ways, I mean, I'm totally sold because I understand the power of the human mind and I've studied it quite extensively. But how do you help others overcome maybe that disbelief that it could actually be this simple?

Yes. And as we mentioned earlier, 10, 20 years ago, this was an impossibility to even explain this to people. We were very fringe. But now I think it's becoming more and more a mainstream idea. And we have many functional medicine practitioners, alternative practitioners, acupuncturists, coaches, all recommending our program as part of their package, in fact, and for some practitioners especially mold illness, they're even recommending people do our program first. And if that doesn't 100% solve it, then they'll look at the physiological level. That's the level it's got to now. And so it's really in the zeitgeist right now. And I think the number one challenge we have from patients and support groups is. Oh, you're saying it's in the mind. Yeah, and this is the dichotomy that unfortunately medicine has left us with, which is you go to a hospital, here's the immune department, here's the physiology department. Right. Here's a psychology department. They're separate departments. The brain and body don't function like that at all. We are one system, one human being that requires this holistic integrated response. And we say to support groups time and time again, we are not saying this condition is psychological or made up in the mind. We say it's in the unconscious brain. But there are ways of accessing the unconscious brain that are beyond just medicines or surgery. But are brain rehabilitation type techniques. The example we give is, let's say someone's had a stroke and they've lost control of an arm or a leg or a limb. Now it's not a psychological response for them to say, oh, well, they can really control it, but they choose not to. It's because the wiring is unfortunately changed and they need to rewire that by gentle rehabilitation. Yeah, building new neurons to control that limb. That is not psychological. That is brain rehabilitation, brain rewiring, neuroplasticity, whatever you want to call it. Of course it has psychological aspects in it. Of course someone has to be positive and want to do this. But ultimately it's a new branch of medicine. I think that's the number one skepticism we face. And then secondly, once again, from the mainstream medical profession, well, what's the proof of this? This sounds, you know, very airy fairy or whatever. And obviously it's not airy fairy, but we now are pursuing the science behind this. So we've already published different medical papers, different studies. So we published a clinical audit showing that two thirds of our patients reached 80 to 100% recovery within one year and 92% of patients improved. And then we recently published what we believe is the first randomized control trial ever published on a neuroplasticity program like ours. And it was on fibromyalgia. And it found that within eight weeks there was a 40% drop in fibromyalgia scores, but zero in the control group. And there was a halving of pain, halving of anxiety, halving of depression and a doubling of functional capacity just in eight weeks. And those benefits continued for the final measurement, which I think was five months. And that has now been published, that was published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine and that has now spurred on more clinical studies. So we're exploring more and more different clinical studies. And once we build up that base, then that's once again in science that's irrefutable that here we are, there's a bunch of studies showing that this is an effective treatment. And that's what we're really focused on so that you don't have to try and believe it anymore. The science already backs it up. It's simply about the commitment. And of course, the number one challenge with any self directed program is that commitment and continuing to do it. So popping a pill is easy, retraining your brain? I'm not saying it's hard, but it's certainly not as easy as popping a pill. It does require that daily exercise, that daily commitment. And that's something that we're really working hard on of how do you make it easier for people to integrate into their lifestyle, make it part of who they are and for them to want to do it each day. And that's why we're constantly refining it to make it really easy to use.

Yeah, that brain fitness equals whole life fitness. Right. If our brain is firing the way it's supposed to a lot of things in our lives go the way that they should. I'm curious if you use any wearables like oura ring to measure HRV to see how the tune of the nervous system is changing as people are going through your program.

I mean, certainly our patients, of their own accord, do perhaps look at some of that biofeedback, HIV, etc. The reason we don't focus on it is because actually, when you're retraining the brain, sometimes in some patients that can be counterproductive because what you're doing is you're telling your brain that you are safe and there's nothing to worry about. But then taking a measurement of the body, which may or may not be the way that you want it to, which can then reinforce that there's danger, you know, And I don't know if you've heard about this, but with wearables now, there actually has been some, I think not for everybody, but for many people, it can be counterproductive. Oh, my sleep is really bad. Oh, it's getting worse because I can now see all the data, Right?

Yeah.

Or actually, even when we're doing physical measurements or whatever, we suddenly recognize, oh, there's something wrong that I wasn't even aware of before. So what we prefer, and people can obviously do those things, but we prefer to actually just focus on constantly telling the brain and the body that you are safe and moving in that direction. And for most people, that works just fine.

What are some threats in people's homes that make them feel unsafe? I'd be curious. I would imagine that along with the exercises that you have them doing, they probably have to set up their environment for success as well. Are there any red flags that people should look for in their homes that might be creating that feeling or a lack of safety, or perhaps there are some tools that they can use that make them feel more safe. I know that weighted blankets, as an example, make us feel more safe because we feel like we're getting a hug. Maybe certain types of clothing can make us feel safe because of the tactile feeling that it has on our skin. So I'm curious if there's additional things physically that people can do or environmentally they can do for increasing that sense of safety.

Sure. I think the first thing is in terms of chemicals, household chemicals, we don't really emphasize this, but in general, we don't want to be exposing ourselves to too many chemicals because the system already is not detoxifying effectively. So that's something that everyone can do is buy more natural organic products. And whether it's shampoos, whether it's cleaning products, et cetera. The second thing we really focus on is an anti inflammatory diet. So that's part of the environmental aspects to an extent. But the most important is nature. Most of us are living in boxes. It's completely alien to our nervous system. And actually what we want to do is be exposed to nature. And so we advise certainly for sleep rhythms that as soon as you wake up, you're exposed to daylight. But secondly, how much time can you spend out of the home? Obviously, little more difficult with, with the winter in the northern hemisphere, but certainly even sitting by a window and looking into a greenery or looking into a garden can benefit. Or surrounding yourself with plants, it's very, very powerful. We know that has a healing effect. So we encourage a lot of our patients to go and sit in a park with a book for as long as you can, or if you can walk, move, walk slowly around a park or around a countryside or on a beach somewhere where you are communing with nature. And the two highest levels of prana and life force are forests and the ocean. Spending time in forests and in the ocean can be incredibly healing for our nervous system and creates signals of safety.

I love that. You know, it's funny because one of the things that I said before we started recording is, where have you been my whole life? And it's amazing because there's a lot of overlap between the message that we try to put out there into the world and the message that you're putting out there in the world. And certainly I don't have the scientific acumen and the research acumen that you do to analyze and measure these things. But it's cool that we're both coming to a very similar conclusion that we're far more capable of healing than we ever thought possible. That most of our issues stem from kind of a dysregulated and unchecked nervous system and unconscious patterns in the brain. It can all be rewired. It takes effort, of course, it takes work. And you've certainly made that easier for us to do and have access to. So I'd love, Ashok, if you can help us get a better understanding of how people can learn a little bit more about what you're offering into the world. I know you've got a 28 day program. I'd love for people to have access to that and maybe you could tell us a little bit more about how, if they're interested in working with you or even someone who's trained by you what that process would look like. And we can send them in that direction because it sounds like it could be very helpful for a lot of people that are listening to this right now.

Yeah. So people can come to our website and there they can sign up for a free 28 day trial. And what that does is give them access to, even to a couple of meditations, lots of videos which explain the condition and a real background to what they can see if they choose to take the full program. So I think we really want to educate people and for a lot of people that's enough. Just having that education is great. And then if they choose to take the full program, then it's a set of 15 video sessions shot in the beautiful mountains of Switzerland. You have over 30 audio exercises and then weekly webinars with myself. So we handhold people through the process with weekly webinars. We've also trained 20 to 30 coaches around the world so people can have one on one sessions with people as well to get that support. And we built up a huge community as well of people who are doing brain retraining and supporting each other through it. And until we get the large scale phase 3 clinical trials, we also offer a one year money back guarantee, no questions asked on the program. So people have nothing to lose by using this program, seeing how it can benefit their health and they can return it and use that money for something else if it doesn't help them.

Amazing. So it sounds to me that it's. I just want to verify that it's all online, it's all done through the Internet. So as long as they're able to get on and, and connect with the content and connect for the calls that are being done, they could be anywhere in the world. You don't have to travel halfway around the world to come and tap into your expertise, which I, which is beautiful because I know there's so many people that are listening to this that may be in different countries and you've made what you're sharing and what you're doing accessible to all. So thank you for doing that.

Yeah, that's what we wanted. You know, I was sitting in my clinic in the early 2000s, Treatino 15, 20 patients a week. I thought, we're getting great results. How can we bring this to the masses? And obviously the Internet was only just kind of coming into its own at that time. And we were one of the first kind of video programs out there. And it's really been a joy to See how many patients have been able to heal, recover, improve, get their lives back. And that's what we live for at the clinic. There's those stories and those wonderful smiles that we put back on people's faces and giving them their lives back. And so what's great is we can reach so many more people by, for, you know, being online. And we will also have an app coming out shortly as well, so there will be even easier to access the resources through the for the app.

Wonderful. So we'll be sure to share that website in the show notes so people can easily click on it and get access. The instant access to the 28 day program. And thank you once again, Ashoka. Is there anything that you'd like to leave us with as a take home message for people who are tuned in right now? Yeah.

It's a message of hope that no matter what your support group has said, or what your practitioner has said, or what your doctor has said, so many people heal from these conditions like long Covid pain syndromes, chronic fatigue syndrome, mold illness, and you can do it too. It's just recognizing that this is not something which is a permanent organic shift in your body, but is a functional condition. Your brain is simply doing what it thinks is best for you by overprotecting you. And if we can access that and we can train your brain, you can get your health back, you can get your life back. And always keep believing that that is possible.

Wonderful. What a beautiful message from a beautiful human being. Thank you for the work that you're doing. I'm definitely looking forward to tapping into this. I see so much potential here for it to be helpful for me to optimize my own health. And I can see how this could be helpful to many, many people who are listening and even people from our practice. I think this is a great tool and resource for them to access so that they can have a much deeper healing with the work that you're doing. So thank you my friend. Greatly appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule and sharing your profound knowledge with us. And here's to an amazing year ahead. And here's to getting out in nature more. Here's to believing in our bodies a little bit bit more, believing in our brains and rewiring them so that we can live an amazing, healthy and happy and whole life.

Thank you so much, Sachin.

My pleasure. Thank you.

Sam.