When I started brain retraining with DNRS, I had been deep in the integrative medicine world for almost 7 years. I had been diagnosed with Chronic Lyme Disease and was working with top integrative doctors. I had a portacath, which I used to self-administer IV nutrients as well as antibiotics. I saw multiple naturopaths, had travelled overseas twice for hyperthermia treatment and plasmapheresis. I even imported my own IV phosphatidylcholine from Ukraine (the good kind from Russia, iykyk). I had worked with acupuncturists, osteopaths and a plethora of amazing practitioners. I followed a strict diet, an extensive supplement regime and was always trying something new (Grammarly is telling me that regimen is the correct word here, but truly my approach to healing was so strict and authoritarian I am going to keep referring to it as a regime). I wore an Oura ring and tracked my stats obsessively. I had an air filter running in my room 24/7, had my parents redo the flooring because of mould, I was doing absolutely everything I could to make healing happen and deeply believed in this work. I had plans to heal and become a naturopath.

I am not exaggerating when I say my mindset was authoritarian and regimented. Everyone in my extended family feared me visiting because they wouldn’t know what to feed me. I remember once I felt up for staying the night at a friend’s place and I took two big bags, filled with multiple bottles of filtered water so I wouldn’t run out, then a bag of food that I’d sit and eat by myself whilst everyone else enjoyed other food, then another bag full of my 20+ bottles of supplements. I am embarrassed to admit that now, but I also have empathy for my past self. She was being controlled by fear.

Brain retraining offered a completely different perspective. The idea that you could heal without any of these things was shocking to me. I remember seeing a video of someone in recovery raving about how they could eat burgers and cake. My first thought was, “But gluten is toxic, why would I WANT to eat that?” I slowly began to realise that my mindset was more toxic than the gluten.

It took me a while to understand how I could hold these two truths at once. The truth that some foods, lifestyle choices and environmental triggers are not the healthiest choices for our bodies. Alongside the truth that the nervous system can over-amplify our response to these same stimuli. How could I carry this out in practice? I knew EMFs, glyphosates, certain ingredients and mould were things I should avoid to promote health. But how could I avoid them without fear and without reinforcing the pathways in my brain that were already overfiring?

I also found it difficult to know how to approach treatment. Practitioners were telling me to take certain supplements and medications to combat symptoms, but brain retraining was telling me I just needed to rewire my brain. Why would I keep taking supplements if I believed my brain was the root cause?

I started to realise that my hypervigilance and the stressful approach I had to healing was doing more harm than good. However, I did not completely stop treatments. I saw supplements and treatments as support for my body while my nervous system healed. The biggest shift was moving from fear to love. I stopped approaching healing as something I had to do perfectly to survive, and instead started making choices from a place of care for my body.

I do know others in the mind-body space that completely stop everything and go all in on the mind-body approach. Dan Buglio and The Mindful Gardener both talk about this. I definitely had stints of trying this where I threw my diet out the window in the name of eliminating fear, but I took it too far in the other direction and soon realised a diet of sugar didn’t make me feel good. There is also a part of me that loves health, wellness and experimenting and trying new things. I just approach it all completely differently now. It’s about fun, love and not fear or need.

Eventually, over the course of my brain retraining journey, I gradually pulled back on treatments. I simplified my supplement protocol and reduced how often I was seeing my doctor. When I look back at those two years after I started brain retraining it’s interesting. I was very lax with supplements and diet, often forgetting to take things and finally enjoying different foods for the first time in years. I pretty much didn’t change or do any new treatments for two years. And I improved immensely. When I travelled to Japan at the end of 2023 (a milestone recovery trip I wrote about here), I was at a farm homestay and the host told me her grandmother had lived into her late 90s and had chocolate after dinner every night. She said it made her happy and that outweighed anything else. Pre brain retraining me wouldn’t have believed that, however, that was exactly the shift in mindset I needed.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in integrative medicine. I wholeheartedly believe that a skilled integrative practitioner can be a huge part of your healing journey, and it has definitely been a huge part of mine. I even worked at an integrative health clinic last year and experimented with some fun devices like PEMF and HBOT that supported my healing. I also witnessed some incredible recoveries. Improving mitochondrial health and turning off the cell danger response is key, but the most effective way to do this is somatically.

I believe that without nervous system regulation, integrative medicine can’t reach its potential. I noticed that in myself. After a few months of DNRS and focusing on my nervous system, the supplements that used to make me react started to work. If treatments are being given to a system in coherence, then its healing potential is much greater. Putting supplements into a stressed system that is fighting itself is like putting a Band-Aid on a wound gushing with blood.

I also don’t believe I would have healed as much as I have without nervous system work, but I do believe that I could have healed without integrative medicine. In my experience, the people I have met through brain retraining have experienced significantly more healing than those I meet taking a purely integrative medicine approach.

My key learning from brain retraining was to support the nervous system above all else and approach treatments with love and not with fear. This shift transformed my health.

Here are some tips that helped me rewire my brain in this way:

• When I first started DNRS I removed myself from any chronic illness groups and immersed myself in brain retraining communities.

• I pulled back to a very small set of supplements and eventually stopped taking any herbs or medications targeted at chronic infections. I didn’t stop overnight.

• Reading Louise Hay’s affirmations around health and healing truly helped me change my approach. These affirmations focus on making choices to love and honour your body. For example, “Nourishing myself is a joyful experience and I am worth the time spent on my healing” and "I choose nutritious foods that nourish my body"

• If I did see practitioners, I set boundaries around the conversations we would have. I’d ask them to just do their thing and not tell me everything that was “wrong.”

• I stopped obsessively researching treatments or supplements I could try. I stopped getting copies of test results from my doctor and needing to track everything. I stopped asking if I needed extra tests.

• I stopped thought patterns where I was linking symptoms or sensations to treatments or supplements.

• I did a lot of visualisations of myself being around triggers. I remembered the version of me who didn’t worry about being exposed to different things, going to PE class and having fun spraying different perfumes afterwards, staying in places while travelling without checking for dampness, pizza parties and endless chocolate at sleepovers. I truly tried to tap into that carefree attitude I grew up with. At first there would be a voice reminding me of the “dangers” in the environment, but I would keep repeating the visualisation until that voice went away.

• Old me wouldn’t believe this, but I actually moved into a damp apartment about 8 months into brain retraining. The rent was cheap and I knew living closer to the beach and city would give me more of a life. I lived there for about 14 months and improved dramatically during that time. I realised later while travelling that I had stayed in a mouldy place and didn’t even notice. This was the same person who had once cried herself to sleep in Singapore after hyperthermia treatment because the hotel was mouldy.

• I stopped wearing my Oura ring for a long period as I realised I was obsessing over it and its overall impact was negative.

• I was very strict about not calling things toxic or poison and removing any fears around things in the environment, especially those that are out of my control.

• I reintroduced working with some practitoners after my 2+ year break when I was in a place where I could visit without reactivating hypervigilance or fear-based thought patterns.

As always, please note this is my journey for the symptoms I had, and the ideal approach is to have a brain retraining friendly practitioner, which I am very grateful to have.

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So many of you have been reaching out asking about this and I realised, to my surprise, that I hadn’t written about it yet. Consider this long overdue.

Unfortunately, part of healing nervous system dysregulation inevitably involves patches where symptoms and sensations will intensify. Recovery isn’t linear and it is very common for things to ebb and flow. I truly believe that learning how to navigate through these ebbs, to become truly indifferent to a flare in symptoms, is probably one of the most important things that can aid recovery.

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When symptoms flare, this is just the nervous system telling you it doesn’t feel safe. It is SO hard to believe this when you first start brain retraining and you aren’t yet convinced that nervous system work will help you. But if anything, random unpredictable flares became more evidence to me that my brain was misfiring. Why did I have symptoms at times I could never tie to a change in medication or supplements? Why would I spend weeks in bed after overdoing things and at other times be completely fine? That unpredictability to me was a sign that the nervous system was in play.

When this happens we have two choices. We can stress, ruminate and wonder what is going wrong, reinforcing these pathways and contributing to the continuation of the vicious cycle. Or we can learn to respond with indifference, recognising that our nervous system is feeling unsettled and using our tools to send messages of safety. I see it as a game. The higher level prefrontal cortex, our thinking brain, needs to rise above that stressed, fearful voice of the limbic system.

The first step is understanding this is the brain. The second is finding ways to respond. Yes we can use tools like visualisations, breathwork and others taught by programs such as DNRS and Primal Trust, and double down on them, but I think the underlying mindset needs to shift for true change. Here are some tips that have worked for me:

• Don’t talk about it. Don’t reinforce the idea of a ‘dip’. Don’t complain and tell everyone you are in a ‘setback’. Language really matters. For the purposes of this post I am using the word dip, but when I have experienced an increase in sensations I try not to use the word at all. Someone once told me they call it a meadow, a little pause in the forest with sun shining through. Side note: the word meadow always reminds me of that scene in Twilight where Edward is glittering in the sun. Ok, now instead of using the word dip you can think of that and laugh at how silly it is. See how easy it can be to change our association, changing your relationship to the experience is key.

  

• Frustration is one of the biggest emotions that comes up during these times. I used to pause, validate that feeling then remind myself of higher emotions I could move towards. My inner voice would sound something like this: “Oh Alex, of course you are frustrated, anyone would feel frustrated. But is there a higher emotion we can move towards that is going to serve you better right now? Is this frustration helping your nervous system?”. Perhaps at times you may need to journal and really let that frustration out, but then start to notice where you are attaching a story to the frustration or ruminating on it. Thoughts such as, “this always happens. I’m always sick. Not again, my body can’t do anything”. Gently notice these, validate them, then redirect.

• I would also tell myself I had the choice to sit and wallow in frustration feeling sorry for myself, or to surrender and rise above. Some days frustration and wallowing did win, but more often than not I was able to accept where my nervous system was at and move into a higher state. Logically we know that the second option is the better long term choice, it just takes a bit more motivation. With both options it might not change my immediate symptoms, however, being with them with a better mindset is also a better overall experience.

• Really become aware of the thought patterns that come up. Recognise that your brain is in a stress state and is seeing the world through the lens of unsafety. The brain will start to tell you that brain retraining doesn’t work and that you can’t heal and many other wild stories! When you notice that, try to laugh it off. That is just your limbic system talking. Really try to become that higher-level observer of what is happening, watch your thoughts with detachment and try not to get pulled into them. This is your brain trying to keep you in the stress response.

• See each meadow as an opportunity to practice your tools, aim to do just a little bit better each time. You’re not going to become perfectly neutral to these sensations right away. As a woman, I used to have very challenging periods once a month. Because I knew these were coming I started to see them as an opportunity to practice staying in a higher state. During the weeks before I would write a script to read to myself during that time, something like: “You are chipping away at this every day, becoming more experienced at understanding your nervous system and how to surrender. The limbic system is learning that you are safe. This is a new opportunity to teach the body to heal.” I know others who like to have voice recordings of visualisations ready.

• Stop and feel your body. Am I tensing up? Are my shoulders relaxed? Is my jaw tight? I really love this ‘allowing’ meditation for tapping into a feeling of surrender and ease.

• Remind yourself that you are safe. The nervous system is responding to a trigger that it doesn’t need to respond to. Use this moment to teach it that these triggers are completely safe. I remind myself, the more I can relax into sensations when they arise, the more I am teaching my brain safety and the less reactive it will be in future.

• Something shifted for me when I realised I had taught myself to become indifferent to dips but there was still a part of me thinking “next time a dip comes I’ll know exactly what to do.” Then I realised I needed to change that narrative to, “I don’t have dips anymore. They are not part of my existence.” That is what I tell myself now. I had a virus recently and rested for a week or two after, but that was just what any person would do after a rough virus. Nothing more than that.

• I do use this time to prioritise my tools, such as meditation, DNRS rounds or even listening to a Primal Trust Brain Attunement on repeat. However, it’s important to approach this with ease. Not in a “OMG, I NEED MY TOOLS MY NERVOUS SYSTEM IS STRESSED, let’s do two hours of rounds” way (guilty!), but in an “ok, what tool can I use right now to send love and support to my body.”

• Oftentimes, these patches do involve the need to reduce activity. This is difficult because we don’t want to pull back out of fear of symptoms and reinforce any loops in our mind that are linking an activity or a trigger to symptoms, but we also need to recognise where our nervous system is at. For me when I pull back on activity I do it with love for my body. Because I love my body I am honouring where it’s at, but I know that those triggers are not the issue. My nervous system just needs a little bit more love at the moment. The way we speak to ourselves through this is important. We want to minimise fear and not reinforce any connections to triggers. You are not in the meadow because you ate something, moved too much or overdid a treatment, it’s just the nervous system recalibrating and rebuilding capacity.

I hope this collection of tips helps. I have a feeling this could become a series! There are so many different ways to approach it. I'd love to know what works for you, drop it in the comments.

Ps - I love hearing from you! It motivates me to write and gives me more ideas on what to share. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. Thank you to Lola who inspired this post

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People always ask me if I am afraid of getting sick again. The truth is, that I genuinely don’t believe in relapse. The more I progress in my recovery from chronic illness using neuroplasticity principles and nervous system regulation work, the more my understanding of how chronic illness manifests becomes clearer. Last year, my experience with COVID tested my beliefs but ultimately left me with a deeper understanding of how neurological programs run chronic illness patterns.

I actually wrote this piece last year when I was in Bali. Sitting at a cafe and it flowed out in one sitting. I revisited it two weeks ago, right before having surgery! Obviously getting my mindset right was essential in the lead-up and there was a bit of fear around it. Whilst it wasn’t a huge surgery (just on my nose to improve my breathing, not the aesthetic kind unfortunately, I am sure I will write about it soon), I still wanted to make sure my body and mind were in the best place possible prior. Reading and editing this just before surgery definitely put me in a good mindset.

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The brain and nervous system have set ‘programs’ that they run. I believe when someone is chronically sick, the brain is stuck in a ‘chronic illness’ program. My brain was stuck this way for years. How it gets stuck there is a trickier one to answer . Often it’s the perfect storm of events that moves the nervous system into a stress state and it maladapts, starting to run this program. For example, you may get a virus, the virus clears, but your brain still believes the threat is there so it keeps running the same program. It’s almost like a glitch in the system. (I have written more about this in a previous post linked below).

As a result of experiencing these symptoms, we become stressed, with looping thoughts and rumination, all of which reinforce messages of unsafety in the body. This deepens the brain pathways that cause illness and almost ‘hard-codes’ these neurological networks, though as we know with neuroplasticity, nothing is ever truly hardcoded. With time, this ‘chronic illness’ program becomes the default way of being.

Using brain retraining and nervous system regulation work we can teach the brain a new program, let’s call it the ‘thriver’ program (I’ve been loving this term lately, thank you Abraham Hicks). Using the tools that programs like DNRS and Primal Trust teach and signalling safety to the nervous system allows us to slowly build this new program. The brain is neuroplastic and with repetition, it has no choice but to change. New pathways get stronger and stronger until they take over our subconscious and become our default way of being. Suddenly, the brain and nervous system runs the ‘thriver’ program without us having to think about it.

I think of brain pathways like a ski run. When we create new ones it’s like skiing down an uncharted mountain for the first time. It’s not smooth at first. But the more we go down that same run, the easier it becomes and eventually it becomes the default.

Last year I had COVID and was in bed for a week but recovered quite smoothly. A week later a few stressful events happened one after another and in the weeks following I found myself with some old symptoms reappearing. I’m not going to lie, at first part of me started to think “oh no, my old symptoms are returning, am I going to relapse?” But because of all my nervous system work and my understanding of the brain, I knew I just had to keep prioritising sending messages of safety to my brain and nervous system. I could see that the confluence of stressful events had pushed my brain back into a stress state. I know that when my nervous system perceives fear, uncertainty and stress it reverts to the “chronic illness” program.

Whilst I hadn’t used that program in a while, the remnants of it are still sitting in my brain, like an old neurological imprint. Using the ski analogy, it’s an old run that perhaps hasn’t been used in a while, but once you go down it once or twice it clears up and becomes smooth again quickly. The brain says “remember this way” and clicks back into those old pathways. It’s like riding a bike after a long time, you feel a little rusty but then your brain clicks into gear. Or practising a language after a few years, the pathways are still somewhere in the back of your brain and you surprise yourself when sentences start to come back.

For chronic illness, I think that neurological imprint may always exist in the brain. But with time it will have less and less power. After years of not practising a language it becomes much harder to slip into a fluid conversation. I think this also explains why in the years following recovery some people may be more susceptible to the occasional flare. The more time we spend running the ‘thriver’ program, the more the old ‘chronic illness’ program loses its power. One of the biggest principles in neuroplasticity is “use it or lose it.” These unused neural circuits will degrade over time. In years to come, it will take a lot more stress and nervous system dysregulation to switch that old program back on.

Knowing this, I don’t fear relapse. I know with my whole being that I am not going to end up back where I once was. When I was experiencing those sensations post-COVID, I focused on all my nervous system tools. Visualisations, DNRS rounds, redirecting thought patterns, somatic work and patience, trusting that my brain would switch back to the ‘thriver’ program I’d spent the last two and a half years building. After a few weeks it did. Sometimes it really is like a switch flicks and the new program starts running again. I remember once being mid-Pilates class and feeling exactly that, flicking back into ‘thriver’ mode.

I hope this helps anyone navigating their recovery using brain retraining and neuroplasticity principles, especially anyone experiencing a setback or dip. I plan to share more practical tools on how to actually navigate setbacks in my next post.

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I met Angela through DNRS, she started the program after me. I remember seeing her face pop up in laughter yoga classes. After a few weeks and then months, I watched her improvements through the screen. Her face became brighter and more joyful, I could feel a shift in her energy. It was something I saw happen often in DNRS, I jokingly call it the DNRS Glow Up. Angela’s smile epitomises the lightness, joy and ease that can come from dedicating to brain retraining. I felt very inspired watching her and we ended up connecting. She has kindly offered to share more of her story.

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Just a warning for those currently rewiring, this post contains references to symptoms.

I know brain retraining is big on not talking about symptoms, but can you share what medical labels you were given and what symptoms you lived with before starting DNRS?

What follows is a snapshot of the conditions and symptoms Angela lived with. While no list can fully capture the reality of those years, this gives a sense of the scale.

1. Gastroparesis (at worst point, stomach stopped processing almost completely where 95% of food wasn’t getting through, and I spent months unable to hold down food or water, followed by 2 months in the hospital where I received IV nutrition, so in total I didn’t eat food for 4 months)

2. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)

3. Breathing problems when exposed to smoke, food, dust, outdoor air, many smells, mould, pet fur, chemicals, fibres from board game puzzles etc.

4. Esophagitus

5. Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)

6. Gastritis

7. Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)

8. Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)

9. Trigeminal neuralgia, occipital neuralgia

10. Nystagmus (eyes rapidly bouncing and difficulty seeing)

11. Light, sound, touch, pressure, texture, and smell sensitivities

12. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity

13. Tunnel vision in both eyes or complete loss of vision in left eye

14. Reactions to all foods and drinks besides water. Only had 3 foods I could eat, and even those still gave me some level of reaction

15. Migraines

16. Possible long COVID (I believe I had COVID in early 2020, before testing was available to confirm, and some of these symptoms started emerging after this)

17. Inflammation throughout whole body

18. Numbness throughout whole body, particularly in arms and legs

19. Nausea and cyclic vomiting

20. Skin rashes

21. Poor balance, vertigo

22. Brain fog, loss of thought entirely, inability to process information, disorientation and confusion unsure where I was; memory problems; inability to focus

23. Dizziness/Fainting/lightheadedness

24. Muscle cramps, twitching, shaking, tremors

25. Pain and/or burning throughout whole body

26. 24/7 sensation of electricity through whole body

27. Irritable Bowel Syndrome

28. Frequency and urgency to urinate; difficulty or complete inability to urinate

29. Costochondritis

30. Temperature dysregulation

31. Difficulty swallowing, choking/food getting stuck

32. Carpal tunnel in both hands/arms

33. Sinus pressure/blockage, pressure and itching in ears

34. Reactions to and inability to process almost all medications and supplements

35. Cold hands and feet

36. Anxiety/panic attacks, depression, PTSD from medical trauma, disassociation, daily suicidal ideation

37. Night sweats

38. Difficulty walking, sitting, standing, moving any part of my body

39. Inability to lay flat (slept at a 70ish degree angle)

40. My periods each month were so extreme that they would leave me bedridden for days or weeks

41. Chronic infections

42. Weakness

43. Restless leg syndrome

44. Insomnia

45. TMJ & tooth pain in all teeth

46. Couldn’t consume hot or cold food/drinks they had to be room temperature

47. Bloating causing extreme pressure on chest

48. Full body itching, skin crawling sensations

49. Easily Bruising

50. Sleep apnea

51. Misaligned musculoskeletal system

52. Skin and nail discoloration, ingrown toenails

53. Hair loss

54. Enlarged lymph nodes

55. Sore throats

56. Immunocompromised

57. Hands involuntarily turning into claw shapes causing loss of function of hands and arms

58. Sciatica

59. Swelling

60. Difficulty speaking

Almost all of the symptoms/conditions above were severe, and putting them in list form doesn’t feel like it can even begin to encapsulate what it was like to live the way I did every day. So I’ve listed out some examples to give a little snapshot of what my daily life was like for years:

• For years I couldn’t go outside at all due to numerous physical symptoms. I left my apartment complex in January 2022 and couldn’t leave again until April 2025

• I often couldn’t open my blinds to see the sunlight

• I only had 3 foods I could barely eat, but I still tried again and again to add more foods to my diet with extreme reaction after extreme reaction

• In 2021 I had to give up my dog because I started having breathing issues around him, and even after he was out of the home I was still having breathing issues from the remnants of him in the home, so I had to abruptly move out of my home

• I not only couldn’t be around pets, but people had to make sure they didn’t have any pet fur on their clothes before coming into my home. I once had breathing issues from a tiny bit of dog fur on a friend’s sock

• In 2021, I spent months going to the hospital almost every day because of breathing issues, allergic reactions, and not being able to hold down food or water and needing IV nourishment to survive starvation/dehydration, until I was ultimately admitted to the hospital for 2 full months following this

• At one point while in the hospital for 2 months, my eyes bounced up and down so rapidly that I couldn’t distinguish facial expressions or see anything other than blurry indistinct spinning objects 24/7

• I couldn’t shower or use the restroom without assistance. I often could not walk to the restroom at all. I rarely showered, and if I was able to shower, that would be my one “extra” activity for the day and then I’d be bedridden again

• A slight trigger (like a slightly bright light or sound on tv) would trigger extreme migraines and I’d have to sit in the dark with no talking or sound for days or weeks

• I was often bedridden, and when I wasn’t bedridden I would take very slow challenging walks to the couch to sit there all day

• I couldn’t use most electronics - laptops, iPads, or newer phones without severe migraines or other symptoms within seconds of looking at the screen

• Almost everything that entered my home couldn’t have a scent or I would have reactions to it

• I couldn’t prepare my own food or do chores

• For years, at all times, I had at least 15 different symptoms or more on that list. There wasn’t a single minute for years when I didn’t have symptoms. There was no break from it. An average day was extreme suffering, but if I was in a flare up I would be barely surviving at times

• On special occasions like birthdays and holidays I would dress up and pose for pictures just so I would have some kind of record of the years that were passing, and by the end of taking those pictures I would have severe symptoms and be bedridden for days. People often thought I was healthy because I was posting pictures of me smiling, but they didn’t know the suffering that went on behind the scenes

• For awhile I could not listen to music at all

• For months my acid reflux was so severe it was overflowing out of my mouth at all times and I would have to spit and drool constantly during the day, or be drowning in it at night in my sleep

• I couldn’t be in a room for hours after it was vacuumed or else I would have breathing issues from dust

• I often couldn’t lift my arm to brush my own hair, or do other basic movements

• If a friend called me on the phone or came over to my home, I would often only be able to have a short conversation before I had too many symptoms to continue talking. I was much better at listening to them speak rather than having to talk, but even listening was sometimes too much information processing and would cause cognitive issues

• The presence of someone entering a room or tapping me on the shoulder could cause my body to go into shutdown

• I knew if I did certain things like eat chicken (one of the only foods I could eat at one point) it came at the cost of 6ish hours of severe brain fog

• I would often wake up gasping for air from sleep apnea, or wake up with my arms and legs completely numb

• I had to get jaw massages multiple times a week just to even eat puréed food because I could barely move my mouth from TMJ pain

• Most hobbies I tried to do to pass time I would have reactions to - breathing issues from little puzzle fibers, etc, or I wouldn’t be able to hold them to use them because of carpal tunnel

• Any hygiene products had to be special ordered - I had special shampoo, body wash, and toothpaste (my toothpaste was imported from another country). I couldn’t use deodorant, makeup, or so many other typical things a person might use

How did you find DNRS, did you believe it would help when you first began the program?

I went on a long journey of trial and error of researching and trying different things for years. I had gotten to the point of realising my symptoms all seemed neurological at their core (I thought I had actual nerve damage of some sort). I tried many methods of treatment over the years, with the last year prior to DNRS being aimed at treatment for nerve issues. The nerve treatments had incredibly slow and small progress that was negligible compared to DNRS. In August 2024, I had an ‘aha’ moment when I realized my brain was causing these symptoms (see next question for ‘aha’ moment)

My aunt told me about DNRS, and I didn’t understand what it was at first because she pitched it as a “mind-body program,” which with my medical trauma sounded like the gaslighting that doctors had done saying it was “all in my head” etc. But after this realisation that the problem wasn’t “in my head”, it was being caused by real problems in my brain, I researched DNRS more and started it. My aunt later elaborated and told me she knew people personally who DNRS had helped, so I knew it was legitimate.

When I started the program it seemed to explain everything that had ever happened to me the last few years, even the weird seemingly “impossible” symptoms I had been gaslit about. Within the first week of DNRS, I started having big positive shifts in my health, and I immediately felt that I had found the thing for me. However, I think it was still hard to fathom that it could truly cure me since something that big seemed unimaginable at the time. So I would say I believed in it in theory, but it was still hard to imagine the full extent to which it could change my life, since my life had been so bad for so long, and that was all I knew anymore.

But to be clear, up until that time right around starting DNRS, I never would’ve believed something like this could work. Throughout my whole life I held a lot of incorrect beliefs about mind-body stuff being fake, or that it was nice for simple stress relief, but nothing more than that. I think this is part of why I care so much about sharing my story in the hopes that it can help other people, because I never would’ve believed something like this exists and that healing is possible for so many things without any treatments, drugs, surgeries, etc.

What were the first shifts you noticed? Or any ‘aha’ moment when you realised this is what you needed?

Within 4 days after starting DNRS my energy had doubled, I was no longer bed-ridden, and my temperature started regulating for the first time. During the first week I also started feeling happy chemicals flooding my body for the first time in years. Shortly after that, other people started noticing there was colour and life coming back to my face. I experienced more changes in the first week than I did in months of the nerve treatments I was doing earlier in the year.

My ‘aha’ moment came before starting DNRS, and it is one of the things that made me realise I should seek out DNRS. I was going through a particularly extreme flare up that had lasted over a month - one of the worst months of my life. I was doing physical therapy for my jaw, which is what caused the bad flare up in the first place. The physical therapy exercise involved doing jaw exercises while biting down on a popsicle stick. Normally, when I experienced symptoms, the pattern would go: physical trigger > symptom (ie smoke > breathing issues; light > migraine). The popsicle stick exercise was what caused the month long flare up I was in. I decided I was finally ready to attempt the exercise again. I held up the popsicle stick in front of me and all of a sudden the severe physical symptoms started BEFORE I even physically put the popsicle stick in my mouth and started doing exercises. That was a massive ‘aha’ moment for me, because normally for years there had to be a physical trigger present to have a symptom, but this time my body was reacting with the exact same physical symptoms before the exercises had begun. That’s when I decided I needed to look at the brain’s role more closely, and I started DNRS shortly after.

I recall you telling me that in your first year of DNRS you didn’t skip a day of visualisations… AMAZING! What does your practice look like these days? What is your favourite tool for regulation?

My bread and butter of my healing has always been rounds and the other parts of the DNRS program. For me this also includes the laugh classes provided through DNRS. Since close to the beginning of starting the program, my symptoms reduced or sometimes melted away by the end of the 30 minute laugh classes. My #1 favorite tool for regulation is rounds. From the very beginning I was so surprised how something so simple could be the most effective thing I’ve ever experienced in my life, better than any drug or treatment I’ve ever tried.

In recent months I have been a little less stringent on getting all 4 rounds in every day. If I’m too busy living life to get all 4 in, I am much more gentle and accepting of myself, and I remind myself having fulfilling days and doing new things is also healing to my brain. But I still do 4 rounds as many days as possible.

I lean into my intuition for what else feels supportive in the moment. When I have time I do Lee Holden’s Qi Gong 30 day challenge. For a few months last year I did Qi Gong every single day. It is only 7 minutes a day, so regulating and healing, and specifically helped get rid of the 24/7 painful electricity in my body.

Lately, I have been trying to do more of Joe Dispenza’s “The Formula” meditation. I don’t usually have time to do that AND rounds, or else I would do it so much more. I find Joe Dispenza’s meditations to be incredibly impactful, and at times it has been drastically transformative to my body mid-meditation. Lastly, I recently started working with Tessa Malcarne, an independent nervous system regulation/rewiring coach. I have been working with her to support my rewiring of some of the remaining underlying emotional issues.

How did you motivate yourself at the start when daily symptoms were debilitating? Do you have a favourite mantra?

The beginning was very challenging. I didn’t even know how I would stand up for 15 minutes at a time for rounds, because for years I wasn’t able to stand that long. But the rounds themselves created the strength and energy for me to stand that long for the first time in years. Even when it was hard physically or emotionally, I was so motivated to do every round because I knew that was the one thing that would make me feel better in the moment and in the long run. Sometimes I would feel so awful I didn’t think I could make it to laugh class, but I would go anyway because I had experienced many symptoms reducing or going away completely just by doing the class. I knew doing rounds and going to these classes were my way out of the situation I was in. I said for years while I was sick: “if I ever find the thing that will get me better, just tell me what it is and I’ll do it, I don’t care what it takes.” And I meant that.

Something that helped me on difficult days is that I tried to emphasise that every day is a new day and a fresh start, as well as what Laura from DNRS says: “every day in every way better and better.” I would try to feel the truth of these statements and implement them into my life. Even if I had a rough day, the next day was a new day, and I went into it with the mindset that every single day would bring growth. People in DNRS talk about how change can happen overnight, or even in a single moment, so one of my frequent affirmations was “I leave open the idea that amazing growth and change can happen every single day.” I would also remind myself that as long as I did the work, my brain was being rewired every day, and therefore the trajectory of my healing was always going forward, no matter how I felt in the moment.

What does your life look like now? What changes have you experienced in your symptoms?

I am still in the process of rewiring and healing, but my life doesn’t look the way it used. The idea of still not being 100% recovered after 1.5 years might have scared me at first if I knew that, but the amount of change that has taken place every month of this journey has been dramatic and life-changing. Every single thing on the above list of symptoms/conditions has either gone away completely or significantly reduced. I do not experience most of the things on that list anymore. I am still working through some of them, but it’s just not even close to how they used to feel, and most importantly I am participating in life again.

I went from not attending a single social event from June 2021-May 2025, to attending almost every big social event I’ve been invited to since May 2025. I went to two weddings, a friend’s baby shower, multiple birthday parties, as well as my own 30th birthday party. I finally got to support my friend in person by going to her stand up comedy show. I planned and attended my brother’s baby shower. I got to meet my brother’s baby right after she was born, and I have babysat her many times since. I’ve done fun things like bowling, swimming, playing in the splash pad at the park, Topgolf, arcades, and gambling at a casino. I went to a beautiful hilltop nature getaway last month and got to enjoy listening to the birds, watching the sunrises and sunsets, and being in nature. I have no sound sensitivity anymore and almost no light sensitivity anymore. I never ever need to live in the dark or quiet anymore - my life is filled with sunlight, lights, and music.

I don’t have any electronics limitations anymore - I have an upgraded phone, I’ve been drawing and learning to animate on my iPad, and I use my laptop all the time. I don’t need assistance for any of the basic activities I did before like showering etc. I can cook, bake, clean, talk as much as I want, and I use whatever products I want to use. I went from having only 3 foods I could eat, to eating whatever I want within 2 months of starting DNRS. I often forget I ever couldn’t eat food because it’s so normal for me to eat now.

I get to be around pets again, and DNRS also cured my 20 year cat allergy that pre-dated my actual sickness. I was even reunited with the dog I had to give up when I started getting sick in 2021 because of the breathing issues I had around him. Two months ago I moved to a new home, and I’ve spent the last two months decorating and finally feeling like I have a home again, instead of the last place that felt like a prison that I was stuck in for years.

A year ago, I experienced a loss in my family, and I grieved and moved through it smoother and healthier than I moved through any of the many previous losses in my life. I struggled with suicidal ideation much of my life on and off, particularly while being sick, but I have only had 2 brief fleeting thoughts of suicidal ideation in the 1.5 years since I started recovering with DNRS. Overall, since I started DNRS, I’ve been in the best mental health state that I have been in my whole life, with a positive outlook for the first time in my life.

What has been the most meaningful win for you so far?

I’m going to cheat and choose 3 wins that all have different meanings to me:

My first outing outside of my apartment complex in over 3 years was a root canal at the dentist. Over the months leading up to it, I could feel the symptoms that kept me from going places drastically decreasing. I still wasn’t at the point of healing that I would have preferred to have to do that, but it had to happen ready or not. It ended up giving me so much progress and opening up more opportunities for other outings after that. I am proud of that first outing that was very terrifying, very challenging, but ultimately exactly what I needed. Prior to that first outing in 3+ years, I couldn’t even remember what it was like to be anywhere else aside from my home. I remember turning onto the freeway on the way to the dentist and a lightbulb turning on in my head, where I could finally remember glimpses of what it felt like to live life again. Also, I even went back to the dentist successfully two more times after that first outing.

Getting to go places again came just in time for the birth of my niece. I planned and hosted my brother’s baby shower at his home, and I was able to meet and hold my niece after she was born. When my brother told me that he was having a baby, I hadn’t even been out of my apartment complex yet. I was hopeful that by the time my niece was born I would have improved enough to go out and be part of her life. And I was able to. I’m so grateful to be part of her life, and to be able to help support my brother and his partner in this new era of parenthood.

Lastly, a very fun and meaningful win for me was my 30th birthday party a few months ago. I threw a 2000’s themed nostalgic costume party, with 50 attendees, karaoke, and dancing. It was full of lights and music and tons of things I could not have been around the last few years. I felt like my old social butterfly self floating around the party enjoying myself. I felt so present and so alive. I also used this party to have a mini law school graduation, because I missed my graduation while being sick. I finished law school in 2020, and the rest of my class had a delayed graduation in 2021, but I was already too sick to attend by that point. So at my 30th birthday party, I got dressed up in my cap and gown, played the graduation song, and had a professor from my law school come to do the mini-ceremony. It was such a special and beautifully emotional moment. I never thought I would be able to have a celebration like that again. I dreamed up the theme of that party while bedridden years ago as a way to remember better nostalgic times with hope of a better future. It was incredible that my dream came true.

What piece of wisdom would you share with the version of you from a few years ago?

I would tell myself that there is a whole untapped world of brain rewiring and nervous system regulation that can treat and cure a large variety of illnesses. I would tell myself it’s not my fault I was sick, that I know I did everything I could, and it’s not my fault that I didn’t know brain rewiring exists, western medicine doesn’t teach about it. I would explain what mind-body work really means, and DNRS (and other programs like it) do not mean it in the triggering and false way that gaslighting doctors and other people do. I would tell myself that there is hope, and just because the doctors say they have nothing for you, that doesn’t mean that’s all that’s out there. I would tell myself not to listen to chronic illness areas of social media that told me once you have a chronic illness that it is permanent. It doesn’t have to be that way. Most people simply do not have the information and tools, because brain rewiring isn’t mainstream yet, so no one teaches us about it.

I would thank myself for keeping going, even when I was told there was no hope. The girl who struggled to breathe, nearly starved to death, begged doctors to help her as they mocked her, and spent every day just barely making it through the day is the same girl who created the beautiful life I live now of throwing parties, making my niece laugh with silly dance moves, and watching sunrises and sunsets at a hilltop cabin, whilst enjoying a charcuterie board. It was only because I kept going that I could heal and become the person I am today (and the person I’m excited to be when I reach full recovery). I would tell myself that I deserve love and joy and a good life, and that I would have all of that again

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This is an edit of a post I wrote for my blog back in June 2024. However, it’s one of my favourite posts, and I absolutely had to share it here. This is a realisation I made back in 2024, and I still wholeheartedly believe in it.

In the brain retraining program DNRS, one of the core practices involves visualising a colour moving through the body. Initially, this was a part of my practice that I didn’t pay much attention to. I recall when I first started doing my DNRS practice, I would imagine a colour flooding my body, but I was just going through the motions, I couldn’t actually FEEL anything. I also spent barely any time on this part of the visualisation.

As my practice has developed and with time, this process of pulling colour through my body has intensified. Now, as I describe a colour moving through me, I can truly feel it in my body. Along with this colour, I experience a feeling that is difficult to describe. A state of softness, peace and ease. Feelings of warmth, lightness and joy. A deep knowing and trust in my body. A feeling of surrender and connection to my true self. Over time, I’ve come to recognise this is the healing state.

I have been seeing an amazing holistic psychologist, aka ‘spiritual mama’, and we do a lot of meditations and inner inquiry where we work on connecting with my body and basking in that feeling. She describes it to me as the healing energy state.

Joe Dispenza speaks about this too. In Becoming Supernatural he talks about this healing energy and how we can direct it. I have spent some time completing his ‘Blessing of the Energy Centres‘ meditation, which involves directing this energy through parts of the body. When I do my DNRS visualisations, I often do a ‘mini’ version of this. After each visualisation, when I am pulling the colour through my body, I focus on bringing it through each chakra or energy centre.

From a biological standpoint, this is an elevated emotional state associated with DOSE chemistry: the release of dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins in the body.

Candace Pert’s book Molecules of Emotion explores the biological underpinnings of this idea in far greater depth. I highly recommend this book; it is one of my favourites. She was a ground-breaking neuroscientist and pharmacologist, and she describes these ‘molecules of emotion’, (a kind of neuropeptide) as having the ability to change the chemistry of all cells in the body, or ‘our own endogenous drugs’.

I love this quote: ‘Each of us has his or her own natural pharmacopoeia — the very finest drugstore available at the cheapest cost — to produce all the drugs we ever need to run our bodymind in precisely the way it was designed to run over centuries of evolution.’ When I visualise colour moving through my body, I feel that I am doing exactly that, directing my body to self-heal using the innate wisdom that only it knows. (Or as Candace Pert calls it, my ‘bodymind’, these two are so innately connected that you can’t consider one without the other)

Interestingly, when I was travelling in Japan, I attended a Zen breathing course that taught techniques passed down by a Japanese Rinzai Zen master. I bought a poster there and in one section it describes visualising a ‘healing butter’ moving through the body (pictured above). I love when different healing modalities or spiritual philosophies arrive at similar conclusions. Different traditions use different languages to describe the same phenomenon. Some might call it Qi or energy, while others explain it through neuroscience.

In recent months, I have started pulling colour through my body when I experience anything positive and see beautiful things whilst out and about in the world. It has become an ingrained habit now, especially when I am witnessing nature. I will sit and bask in appreciation, gratitude, awe and pull a colour through my body.

Over time, I have noticed this feeling intensify, which has made me more motivated to keep myself in that state. This has allowed me to reach another level of surrender and has given me a deeper knowing that my body is self-healing.

I am also able to ‘switch’ the feeling on with more ease and the emotions that accompany it are strengthening. I have noticed that as soon as I start my DNRS rounds this feeling switches on automatically (I am becoming Pavlov’s Dog, if he was fed a diet of visualisations). I can also tell when I am not in that state and my goal has been to keep it in that state as long as I can throughout my day. Of course, living in the modern world, this can be difficult. But the more I do this, the more I know my body keeps healing.

I am excited to continue exploring this and to see if I can learn to direct it to very specific parts of the body and deepen the feeling even more. I have also noticed that a regular Qigong practice allows this shift in my body to occur more easily.

Of course, I have come to realise it’s not really about the colour at all. The colour is simply a doorway into the emotion. And emotion, in turn, becomes the doorway into shifting the body’s internal state. Perhaps this is where neuroplasticity and spirituality meet, and it’s all a lesson in consciousness — thoughts for another post perhaps. This simple tool is a great reminder that we have the power within to cultivate and influence our internal state.

For those practising brain retraining, the colour is simply a helpful tool. It gives the mind something tangible to focus on while the body learns how to access that feeling again.

Some tips if you’re starting:

• You have to go through the motions, and with time and repetition the brain will learn and the nervous system will relax and allow you to connect more with the body. Even if it feels mechanical imagining it, keep repeating it, eventually you will truly feel the colour and emotion in your body.

• Practice your descriptions, describe the feeling with as many descriptive words as you can. Here are some examples:

  • ‘I feel a soft, golden light coming up through the bottom of my feet, filling them with golden warmth. It feels like Tinkerbell’s fairy dust and it’s floating gently through my feet, slowly moving up through my legs spreading a magical feeling of calm, peace, softness and cosiness…”

  • ‘I feel a soft, blossom pink in my heart space. It fills up my heart with peace, love and tenderness. This soft pink starts to gently emanate out into my entire chest, it feels like a cloudy, pastel sunrise and it fills my heart space with a peaceful, calming pink energy, before swelling, growing in love and intensity, then gently spreading further out into my body, taking loving energy into every cell it passes through…

  • ‘A soft blue colour, just like the ocean comes washing through my body, down through my head, undulating down gently through my neck and into my heart space, filling it with a calming, serene blue energy. This blue energy moves like the ocean, gently passing through my body like a wave, it swirls in my chest, filling it up, then gently shifts further down into my tummy…’

• Choose any colour, whatever resonates with you. I use ‘golden light’ probably 95% of the time, as I have continued my practice, new colours have been coming to me. I love blue for the ocean and green after nature visualisations, I also often do a soft blend of ‘sunrise’ colours.

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I believe healing occurs when we can surrender and accept that the brain will change as long as we continue showing up consistently. I also know the power of a recovery story in allowing us to trust and surrender. This is my journey.

In summarising this, I am in awe of my commitment and dedication. In the people I have seen heal using mind-body work the common thread is always consistency. Those who show up every day and do the work heal. I haven’t met anybody dedicated to this work who hasn’t experienced profound shifts in their health.

Everyone has a different path and it doesn’t have to look like mine. Had I read this when I first started brain retraining, I probably would have been frustrated by the time it has taken. Now I am in a place where I know I am truly healing from the inside out and it will take however long it needs to. I hope that for those early in their journey, it gives a bit of hope.

Early 2022

In 2022 I went to Germany for medical treatment. At the time, I had a friend who had returned from the same treatment tell me that she got more benefit from The Gupta Program. I didn’t really believe that and thought the positive effects she had experienced must have been a delayed effect from her time in Germany. However, I purchased the program and half-heartedly gave it a go.

The program itself looked good, but I had zero motivation and didn’t believe it would help me. I thought that by doing the program, I was gaslighting myself and confirming the assertions of dismissive doctors who, early in my health journey, told me my illness was all in my head. I couldn’t find any consistency and six months later I still hadn’t finished watching the videos.

October 2022

I watched an online talk that my integrative doctor’s clinic ran with someone sharing their recovery from chronic illness using brain retraining. She mentioned DNRS and the Our Power Is Within podcast. The similarity of her symptoms to mine and the way she explained the science of brain retraining meant something finally clicked for me, I decided I needed to give it a go. I felt a particular pull towards the DNRS program. At this time, I had regressed in my health due to a concussion, which I am so thankful for now. It was my blessing in disguise that made me desperate enough to make a true change.

I did my first DNRS rounds in October 2022 (rounds are a type of visualisation technique taught in the DNRS program). For six months after this, I only skipped one day. I completely and totally devoted myself to brain retraining. I did one hour of rounds per day, sometimes two hours. I joined three to four laughter yoga classes per week, joined DNRS extra classes once per week, had accountability buddies and WhatsApp groups that helped me stay accountable and did buddy rounds with others to help motivate myself. I started reading recommended books on neuroplasticity such as How to Break the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza and The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. I was very diligent about changing thought patterns centred on illness.

I worked with my neuroplasticity coach Tessa Malcarne during this time, usually at least once a month. I read the DNRS forum almost daily to keep myself motivated and to continue trusting and believing that if I showed up consistently, my symptoms would shift.

About two months in, I started to notice my sensitivity to smell improving. About three months in, I noticed a softening in my severe brain and cognitive issues. At the four to six-month mark, I had big shifts in my fatigue. This gave me a lot of motivation to continue dedicating myself to brain retraining.

January 2023

After a few months of following DNRS, I added in some Qi Gong. I had previously completed a short course but had never practised consistently. I started doing this video between rounds. These took my rounds to a whole new level and allowed my body to reach a truly elevated state of being. Ever since then, I have been obsessed with Qi Gong. I believe it had a profound impact on my healing.

At this point, I started to experience incredible shifts in my energy. I had moments where I went from averaging 2k steps a day to 10k steps a day. I was waking up with more energy and ease, with less heaviness and malaise.

April 2023

Around this time, I discovered JournalSpeak and started to work through the program. However, at this early stage of my recovery, I found it too much for me. It pushed my brain back towards a negativity bias and I would spiral after journaling. I put this practice aside, knowing I would return to it later.

I also started using the app BrainHQ to support neuroplasticity and improve my brain function.

A big milestone was having my portacath removed, for 4 years prior I had been reliant on this for IV treatment that I believed I needed to survive. I was no longer taking any herbs, antibiotics or treatments aimed at reducing infections. This signalled a shift in my belief system, I could truly see I didn’t have chronic infections, but had an impaired limbic system.

July 2023

In mid 2023, I had more capacity in my nervous system and a lot more motivation. I felt a desire to start using some more bottom-up tools, this was when I started the Primal Trust program. Over the next six months, I very slowly worked through the Primal Trust videos, adding in tools like breathwork, eye exercises and brain attunements. I was still doing rounds one hour per day around 90% of the time.

I also moved out of home, began socialising more and had more capacity for living. I remember going back to my first Pilates class in September. It was the first exercise class I had done in nine years. A lot of shifts were continuing to happen and my motivation to continue with brain retraining and nervous system regulation was very high. I still had ups and downs during this time and dips as my nervous system continued to learn safety.

October 2023

I started seeing a somatic practitioner/holistic psychologist and worked on facing some emotions. This was slow and steady, with monthly sessions where we gradually opened up and released stored emotions. By then, I had built more capacity in my nervous system to integrate this work.

November 2023

I went on my first solo trip to Japan. It was an incredible testament to all the brain retraining I had done. While I was away, I rarely did my rounds, with some quick gratitude journaling into my phone most nights. Most days I was walking 20k steps, I went hiking and even did a full-day biking tour that brought me so much joy. I ate foods I hadn’t touched in years, like gluten and dairy, and had nights out with new friends where for the first time in ten years, I felt free from illness. I realised I was capable of far more than I had thought. This was a huge milestone in my recovery.

January 2024

During this six-month patch, I was very dedicated. I would do one to two hours of nervous system regulation practice per morning. I wouldn’t let myself turn my phone on until I had done my practices and heavily reduced my screen time. I had a morning routine of Rosenberg Technique then breathwork: mantra breathing then voo breathing, with breath holds in between. After this I would finish with the Kirtan Kriya meditation. I recall I did a four month streak of Kirtan Kriya. I’d usually do all this before getting out of bed. Later in the morning I would follow this with one hour of rounds. Every night, I wrote a one page gratitude journal and fell asleep listening to affirmations. I was still participating in 3-4 laughter yoga classes each week and some of the extra DNRS group classes for motivation as well. I also did an online Feldenkrais class for a few months. I truly immersed my brain in new pathways. (I’m very proud of myself when I look back!)

During this time, I also worked through Primal Trust Level Two and became more spiritually focused. I stopped thinking about symptoms altogether and focused more on finding stillness and peace in my mind. The more I did this, the more my symptoms naturally dissipated. It wasn’t easy. My limbic system resisted (as detailed in a post below), and my thoughts grew louder before they quietened, but I persisted.

I was starting to wake up at sunrise, increase movement and do lots of walking and ocean swimming. I did a lot of grounding and sunrise swims, increasing my time in the morning sun to boost my vitamin D levels with a focus on my circadian rhythm and light hygiene. I did an online coding course to challenge my brain. My health continued to improve in all areas. I went on a trip to Tasmania with my mum where we did a long hike at Wineglass Bay.

June 2024

I went travelling to Europe for a few months to visit my sisters. I stopped doing my rounds as consistently but still focused a lot on changing my thought patterns, being present, Qi Gong, yoga, meditation and breathwork. I had a lot of wins on this trip. A lot of long hikes, days spent meandering around cities, I also went to a one-week yoga retreat and did some surfing lessons.

Mid to late 2024

I made more progress with my somatic practitioner and started processing deeper emotions. I began using JournalSpeak again, the Ho’oponopono Prayer and worked on actually processing the trauma of my health journey. There were a lot of difficult patches during this time, with a lot of grief intermingled with the joy of being out in the world again.

I was going to Pilates and yoga a few times a week and completing a lot of longer walks, alongside swimming in the ocean most days. I did DNRS rounds probably 70% of the time. My life was getting busier with more socialising, working and being out in the world. I travelled to Taiwan towards the end of the year, which expanded my capacity even more.

2025

This was the year I started working longer hours again, on average thirty hours per week, including full days in a clinic working 8:30 am to 7 pm! This changed my practice a lot. I probably did rounds about 30% of the time. By now, I had a lot of tools in my toolbox and would mix and choose them depending on the day. Some days I did rounds, some days I did JournalSpeak, some days I did Qi Gong, yoga or Faster EFT tapping. I focused a lot on longer Joe Dispenza meditations and worked through the Joe Dispenza Progressive Online Course. I started using the OOV consistently (more about that here), continued with my spiritual practice and working with my somatic practitioner.

At times, I felt a little bit like the zen monk who meditates in the mountains and then comes down to the village and yells at everyone (I’m exaggerating a little there…). A lot of my learning was now focused on bringing nervous system regulation into a busier lifestyle. Yes, I could achieve calm by doing rounds in the safety and quiet of home, but could I also teach my body that there wasn’t a tiger around while working on an Excel spreadsheet with a quick turnaround? Could I stand up for myself if someone was being unkind, without being afraid of confrontation?

My main focus became practising how to incorporate the feeling that rounds bring into my everyday life. Teaching my nervous system that it was safe in new and varied situations and bringing a feeling of presence into my day. I also tried to incorporate practices into daily life rather than needing to block out hours for them. For example, listening to Primal Trust Brain Attunements on the bus to work or listening to affirmations when walking.

I had some dips, but they were less intense and I could still go to work and keep up my daily commitments. I found I could surrender and accept without getting frustrated, knowing my nervous system was continuing to learn safety and recalibrate.

One big win was a shift in my hormones and more ease during my cycle. This was a significant improvement on years prior. My brain function improved immensely throughout the year, with greater focus. My energy also continued to expand and improve. One of my favourite activities in 2025 was learning to freedive, this felt like a huge physical win!

2026

At the start of this year, I would like to return to doing rounds more intensively again to elevate my practice and take my health to the next level. I also feel a calling to develop my Qi Gong practice. I am also committing to the Primal Trust 40 Day Regulate challenge. I now have an extensive toolkit of nervous system regulation practices to choose from and variety helps me a lot.

I noticed some thought patterns started to creep back in towards the end of 2025, and I am working on pruning away these limiting beliefs to continue elevating my healing. I want to be more radical in changing these thought patterns, reminding myself I have unlimited potential. Again, I am finding balance between working, living and dedicating myself to my practices. I think there are times for living and doing less and there are patches where being more consistent and dedicated allows my health to expand. Stay tuned…

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After almost a decade healing from severe chronic health conditions, including chronic fatigue that left me bed and housebound, the tool that has had the biggest impact on my recovery has been visualisations.

If you had told me this a few years ago, I would have laughed in your face. It’s wild that the most effective treatment for me has also been the cheapest and something as unassuming as visualising.

I truly believe it is one of the most underrated and powerful tools for healing, especially when it comes to rewiring the brain and regulating the nervous system. I started doing visualisations when I began DNRS (Dynamic Neural Retraining System). DNRS teaches a specific type of visualisation technique called a “round”. When I started the program, I did rounds for one hour per day for two years, rarely skipping a day. Whilst I can’t share their specific technique, I have written more about the program in general here.

My aim with visualisations is always to be as vivid as possible. I move through all the senses and use the present tense. Standing and moving around a little elevates them for me. I visualise the past to help my brain remember safety from lived experiences, and I also imagine future scenarios to teach my brain what it is capable of.

It has been incredibly rewarding to have visualisations come true. The image accompanying this post is from a specific hike near Tokyo that I started visualising around 6 months before my trip to Japan. I have since had countless visualisations come to life and the feeling is incredible (it’s also funny when the location itself looks quite different to my imagination!).

I had a break from consistent visualisations in the past few months and am now committing to a regular practice again. They are such a powerful tool for me and already I can feel the positive effects of that commitment. I know that being consistent with them will continue taking my health to another level. Here are some reasons why I believe visualisations are one of the most powerful tools for chronic illness recovery.

Rehearsing teaches the brain safety

The brain does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. In chronic illness, the brain has learned to see certain stimuli such as mould, chemicals or even movement as a threat. When we rehearse being around these ‘threats’ and visualise ourselves as safe in their imagined presence, we can take control of the situation and teach the brain how we want it to respond.

The first time I noticed the power of this in action was when I was driving and feeling much calmer and more relaxed. Driving had been a source of anxiety for me and I had done a lot of visualisations of myself driving with ease. I recall driving one day with a passenger and realising how much more relaxed I was, despite not actually having driven much in real life in the period before that.

I also had moments where I suddenly had much more capacity for movement after doing a lot of visualisations involving exercise. I truly believe my brain perceived movement as a threat and rehearsing it mentally allowed my brain to undo that association.

Changes neural networks

It is not just about having a better attitude towards movement or other triggers. Visualisations can actually change the structure and function of your brain.

Studies show that neural networks in the brain can be changed by thought alone. Functional MRI scans show that when a person visualises a movement, the same areas of the brain light up as when they physically do it¹. There is one study where volunteers imagined contracting a muscle for several weeks, whilst another group did real contractions. The group doing mental rehearsal increased their strength by 13.5 percent versus the real group which increased by 30 percent². The book The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge taught me a lot about the power of thought and how we can utilise neuroplasticity for healing.

By doing visualisations, we are teaching safety by physically changing the brain.

Visualisations unwire symptoms

If symptoms are the result of a cross-wiring in the brain, then visualisations are the tool to change this wiring. For example, sensitivity to mould is the result of the brain perceiving mould as a threat and sending symptoms to alert you to its presence, even when exposed to a non-threatening amount of mould (I have explained this in more detail here). To uncross these neural networks, we can use visualisations to teach the brain new associations and turn off this false alarm.

One of the first symptoms that improved for me with brain rewiring was my sensitivity to smell. I did a lot of visualisations of myself around different chemical smells and not reacting. These visualisations allowed my brain to stop seeing these smells as threats.

I know a lot of people who do general nervous system work and experience improvements. However, some symptoms stay stuck. I truly believe that using targeted visualisation work is often the missing link that allows deeper healing to occur. You can do all the yoga and breathwork you want, but if you are consciously responding to symptoms with the same thought patterns, and keeping the same neural networks firing, healing is limited. Visualisation is a way to begin to change this wiring.

Elevate emotions

I love visualisations as they are one of the best ways I have found for elevating emotions. One of the key tenets of the brain retraining programs DNRS and Primal Trust is emotional elevation. When we experience uplifting emotions like joy, peace and love, this signals safety to the nervous system and allows it to move into a parasympathetic state. When we are rewiring associations, new pathways in the brain are embedded more deeply when an elevated emotion is involved in the process.

I did a lot of visualisations of events where I was experiencing uplifting emotions. In the end, my brain became like Pavlov’s dog and as soon as I started a DNRS round I would feel elevated. Being in this state is when healing happens. I have written more about it here. For me personally, rounds allow me to achieve emotional elevation more than meditation and other tools.

They reveal and change subconscious beliefs

This is one of the biggest things I have noticed from visualisations. When I do a visualisation of something I am working towards or have not yet achieved, at times a little voice in the back of my head will pop up and say, “You can’t do that, Alex.” When I notice this voice, I know I have struck gold.

Noticing this allows me to see the subconscious thought patterns and limiting beliefs that are holding me back. For example, early on in my rewiring journey I began doing shorter-term visualisations where I had improved physical capacity in the near future. A voice would say, “Keep dreaming, you won’t be doing that anytime soon.” I would then repeat the rounds until that discomfort and disbelief eventually melted away. With repetition, the brain has no choice but to change. In doing this, we are using the conscious mind to reprogram subconscious beliefs. When we truly believe in a higher truth, the body has no choice but to follow.

I believe that finding and then reprogramming these subconscious thoughts is key to healing. For me, repeated visualisations have been a powerful way to do this.

More present with thought patterns

I find that committing to visualisations makes me much more aware of the thought patterns I carry throughout the day and helps me redirect them more effectively. When I do the full hour of visualisations, I am able to bring more awareness and presence to the rest of my day. It can also highlight areas where unhelpful thought patterns have crept in.

If I have a specific pattern I am working on rewiring, I can also address it directly in my visualisations. For example, if I want to remove unhelpful beliefs around exercise, I visualise myself feeling confident and strong while working out. When I do this, I notice I become more aware of limiting beliefs later in the day and better able to interrupt them.

They allow me to feel unlimited

Visualisations make me feel truly unlimited in my potential. I love using Canva and Pinterest to make visualisation boards and then stepping into those visions. It allows me to push the boundaries of who I want to be and how I want to show up in the world. Do you not want to be afraid of public speaking? Visualise it. Want to show up with more confidence? Visualise it. Fancy yourself as a yoga teacher even though you identify as introverted? Visualise it.

I believe that if I can imagine something, I can become it. I like to push myself beyond my comfort zone within the safety of a controlled visualisation. This gives me confidence as I return to the world.

Final thoughts

Visualisation is much more than thinking positively. It is a neurological tool for retraining and rewiring the brain towards healing. I cannot recommend it enough and it has truly done wonders for my recovery. It is a tool I know I will return to for the rest of my life.

^_Sources

_{1 - Decety, J., Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 1996}

_{2 - Yue & Cole, Journal of Neurophysiology, 2004}

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