Programs
COMING SPRING 2024
01
TRAUMA
It's hard to get through life without suffering trauma. However some of us have been trying to heal for a long time without getting through a day without being triggered or significantly impacted by traumas that may have long since gone, but not forgotten. I have developed some step by step systems to heal that have greatly improved my daily life and can be used by anyone. Both the GRACE Code and the i E.M.P.O.W.E.R. Heal Kit systems can help put some structure around your daily life that will ensure greater peace and make you empowered and empowering to others.
02
NEUROSCIENCE
We all know the usual impacts of trauma on the brain where we get stuck in freeze / fawn / fight / flight, and our rest / digest gets kicked to the curb. But do you know that simple breathing techniques that activate the vagus nerve, can reverse that. Also the 3 neural networks in our brain responsible for deciding what to pay conscious attention to and how you should react, are greatly impacted by trauma. Learn how to remap your Default Mode Network (DMN) neural pathways so that your instant reaction is not "your life is in danger." Practice positive feelings, which advise your body to release the good hormones, and once you get to a certain level of practice, start planting the seeds of what you really want your life to be.
03
SYSTEMS THINKING
Join the push towards systems thinking and mental models. The old school ways of treating each component in isolation are done. Systems thinking breaks down complex issues, to figure out what is going on and what to do about it. Just like if a customer service team work on their processes in isolation of the warehouse who packs and ships the product. What good is that if customer service dont take into consideration how long it takes to pick, pack and ship items? They go telling the customer, "Sure you can have that tomorrow." Everything is connected. If you upgrade one thing - it must be done in consideration of the whole.
In Healthcare, maybe I have a headache. If I go to a GP, they'll say - take some aspirin and come back if it doesnt go away. If I see a neurosurgeon, they'll be looking at MRI scans to see what's wrong with my brain. If I go to a naturopath they'll look at the levels of vitamins and minerals in my body and see if I'm lacking something. If I ask my Mom - she'll tell me that I'm dehydrated and to drink more water. If I go to a therapist they'll ask me what I'm stressed about. The body is a system yet we review symptoms in isolation. We need a more functional medical approach. We need to look at the whole being, and do a deep dive to everything in my body, emotions, and environment that may be contributing to my headache. Then we can heal the cause, not just the symptom.
Humanity is a system too, we are all connected. Every thought and action has energy, it defines what will be in your future. But we often dont set up clear mental models to live the game of life. What we do doesn't just affect us, it affects everyone around us. We have made leaps and bounds in physical health but often the issue is emotional. How many people go to the gym every day, vs how many work on emotional dysregulation? When I was at school I spent all summer PE lessons in the water learning Life Saving First Aid from Grades 5-6. There weren't any lessons in emotional regulation or delayed gratification, or learning how to communicate my needs effectively. It may have changed by now, but the balance is still way off.
The ideas I'm bringing forward are holistic, they are a root cause analysis of what your goal is and how best to achieve it. The Pareto Principle can determine the 20% you need to work on to produce and 80% return.
**I am not a professional counsellor and in no way should this advice be in place of professional assistance. This is my own concept built from my own healing experiences.
04
PRACTICE
Do first aiders practice CPR? Why? What about drills? Karate katas, armed forces drills, ER hospital drills? Why? What about athletes? Do they just wake up and decide to run a marathon the next day? No! Why? So that we can train our muscle memory to react in similar situations. Do you realise how patterned we are? If we weren't Jeff Bezos would not be a rich man. Data science wouldn't be a thing and the Meta algorithms wouldn't work. Have you learned drills for mental health? Do you know what your own standard patterns are (I'm sure Alexa or Google can tell you.) I have developed some practices that work for recreating neural pathways in order to feel differently when a trigger occurs. It allows you to react differently and let's your mind catch up to know you are safe. It's time to stop trying to heal a system issue with an isolated cognitive approach. Don't stick to the one resource. Counselling is great, but there are nutritional impacts, brain impacts, health and emotional impacts that can't just be talked about. Can you learn to drive by talking about it? No. So expand your approach to healing. Let's go on a journey together. Be part of the paradigm shift.