Hello warriors. Thanks for being here.
I was watching some trainings that I’m doing to increase my knowledge about genetic nutrition, and as I was listening I was really shocked as it sounded like the speaker read my book! It was principles that I’ve been doing in my clinic since the inception, and why I wrote a book about the priority of healing.
I understand many have not read Freedom Brain, so I thought that I would highlight some of those principles in a blog as I also believe that it is really vital for anyone starting their health journey. It’s conversations I have with my new patients, but recognize that many don’t and so I’d like to share that information to the masses so all can really have a guide for themselves.
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In my book I go over three different phases of health/healing that I found to be extremely important not only clinically but scientifically when done in a certain order. Why?
There’s a sequence to healing. In my book I mention first healing the mechanical(nervous system) then chemical and emotional. Often we jump into too much at the same time, we end up actually hurting ourselves. And I’ve seen this over and over and over and over again, where people go into a healing journey and sometimes actually get worse. So where is the best place to start, and what do we actually do? I’ve been through this, and anyone that takes you through a functional healing journey has been through the same and will coach the same. In fact, if you go to a good functional medicine practitioner and say, I have an autoimmune condition, I have Lyme disease, I have a crazy menopause that I can’t deal with, make me feel better, they will tell you, this is a two year project.
The decades it took you to get you there takes time to unravel and break down. So understand that there’s a timeline and a process to true healing, but in the very beginning is where you get the most outcome, so you will start to feel better fairly quickly. And eventually there’s a plateau. But each one of those plateaus just requires a bit of a shift to then continue that healing journey and get better and yet better again and get better again. Many want quick fixes, and while I do believe healing can be in an instant with God’s assistance, other situations can take time, or a working of it/through it.
We are all unique and different, each made with a purpose. My belief is by using your DNA and personalizing things, you remove a lot of trial and error with a lot of these functional medicine programs. You remove a lot of one size fits all, and therefore this two years can be potentially brought down to six months to a year. And ideally, you’re doing all of what you would have done in the two years, but by removing the one size fits all, you’re doing exactly what your body needs, and therefore you’re getting there faster.
Now how do we do this? How does this unravel? Step one, we need to deal with the acute: the terrain has to be in a state to actually be ready to heal. You can’t jump into throwing every supplement, every treatment, every product and service, if the body’s not ready to receive it. And often we’ll watch an influencer or somebody of knowledge that has a podcast, a YouTube video, and you’ll say, I want that. I want to do what that person is doing. And they’re saying, go take this pill. Go take this red light therapy. Look how it makes me feel. And if you look at the background story of that person, they’ve been doing it for a decade or plus before they got to where they got to, and in that decade, they likely had a lot of problems and a lot of failures, a lot of plateaus, before they finally found that thing that felt so good that they need to scream from the rooftops: this is what everyone needs to know. Everyone needs to be a vegan/carnivore, everyone needs red light therapy, everyone needs to do high intensity cardio, because that’s what worked for them, and they believe will work for everybody.
The truth is, the reason you’re in my clinic or reading this, is to learn what actually works for you. So step one, the terrain has to be ready to get the outcome that you’re seeing in those YouTube videos. That person found that thing and put it on top of a terrain that they already have toned down the acute problem.
So what is that thing you’re dealing with? Is it pain? Is it stress? Is a trauma that needs to be toned down. First step one, turn the dials on the big heavy weight in the room, the big ROI is going to be the body’s now ready to receive healing and fix itself. Where do you go from there. It’s only after you’ve done that this phase one of I’ve turned the acute fire down that we can now get into that optimization phase, phase two, which is now, what supplements do I take? What exercise do I do? You would have already spent several months, turning the fire down, dealing with the acute problem, to then get the terrain ready, to now receive the benefit of the pills and the treatments and everything else that you want to add into the mix.
This optimization phase often can go on for six months to a year, especially if you don’t have your genetics, or the right nervous system derived care to drive personalized insight. Meanwhile, the six months a year you’re spending on this is once again, acclimating your body to eventually receive the longevity biohack. So it isn’t until you’re a year into a healing journey that you even start some of the major biohacks, which is where people usually want to take off on day one. So again, turning down the acute let’s deal with the pain problem. Let’s get the terrain ready to actually receive the benefit and do the job step two, optimization.
You can learn all of this upfront, but there’s a cadence to how you roll them out after this is all done, that’s when you get into longevity territory. That’s when you get into let me take some stem cells, let me fly to retreat. Let me go to a Biohacking Conference and learn everything they got. And I’m going to do the best of all of What’s New only after the body has been optimized, and it is ready to receive the benefit of all of those things. Because if you’re just throwing stem cells, a 20- $40,000 treatment, into a body where the terrain and the nervous system and the gut isn’t ready, what benefit are you going to receive? A fraction of its potential. Instead get the body ready, go through the process, turn the fire down, get the terrain at its best.
WHERE TO START?!
STEP 1.
Now that we know the sequence, here’s how you roll out all of what you’re going to implement. Where do you actually start? I have learned over and over and over and again that anyone that’s coming in for a healing, longevity or optimization. Journey needs to start here, until you understand the traumas and the stressors that are dragging your mind down, you can’t implement all these beautiful things that we do. And why do I say this? The body has a very binary choice, fight or flight, or rest and recovery. There’s nothing in the middle, you’re either in a fight or flight, which means the body is not recovering, it’s trying to fight like a warrior and get through something that is stressful, or it’s unrest and recovery. There’s no work to be done right now. Let me repair and regenerate all the damage that was done. There’s nothing in the middle.
As I said, this means, so long as you’re stuck in fight or flight, you are not in rest and recovery, which is why it’s so important to start with cognitive function in the mind, and relieving mechanical stress on the brain and nervous system.
What is your neural map? Who are you up in your head? How do you think? How do you perceive? What causes you stress, what maybe causes you to not experience stress and you push your body too hard? What causes you to hold on to traumas? What causes you to ignore traumas and potentially make the same mistake twice? What causes you to give things meaning or lack thereof? Again, changing the way you perceive your environment and people and how you behave. This needs to be dealt with before anything else happens.
Cellular Health is a huge topic now in the health field, but cellular health is nervous system plus functional medicine, putting these two things together, dealing with the nervous system starts with trauma(physically and emotionally) and understanding stress.
Dealing with trauma and understanding stress starts with understanding your neural map and how you uniquely perceive the world, and therefore why the things you need to deal with are also unique to you. Many people’s neural maps have been formulated due to physical traumas they’ve had to their structure. Whether starting at birth (birth is a physical trauma), injuries, concussions, car accidents, orthodontics (cranial trauma), near drowning incidents and others. The brain will always take the road of least resistance to conserve energy, so based on the roadmap it has, it will function in that manner. This is why I always start everyone in my clinic with taking mechanical stress off of the brain and nervous system through customized cranial chiropractic. This helps to get the nervous system back into a state of parasympathetic tone, and often changes many peoples perceptions of the world. No longer operating in sympathetic drive, you often don’t feel the need to react/respond to things the way you once were. Energy is freed up to focus on other areas of healing. I tend to also include with this education about circadian health/sleep, sunlight, hydration and nature in regards to nervous system regulation.
It’s also interesting to note that about 80% of people walking around have a deviated septum in their nose. This is reflective of airway resistance and them not getting enough oxygen, because functionally the nervous system and their structure is not balanced. There can also be additional inflammatory responses in the nose and airway causing restriction. Because of this fact, I would argue to say that probably a good 90% of chiropractors are just adjusting people over and over and over again and never fixing the issues as to why people’s bodies keep getting out of alignment. They don’t address the brain or the airway, and also its relationship to the pelvis and so the compensatory patterns in the spine keep showing up, or have just formed that way anatomically because these were never addressed. I’m not harping on my profession, I love it, it’s life changing but I also see patient after patient saying they’ve gotten chiropractic and feel no changes. I think the institutions are doing a big disservice to people not including the cranium and airway structures, leaving people still stuck in sympathetic overdrive. And then, people go into orthodontics and other TMJ related professionals and the issues get worse and worse. Because again, the root cause isn’t being dealt with.
Once you balance this, you then deal with cognitive function, executive function and the mind. The reason we start here is because it’s very difficult to get past anything else until you fix this, irrespective of whether you think you have trauma or not, irrespective of whether you think your life is stressful or not, I can tell you with certainty that anyone that I’ve dealt with needed this work. No matter what level of the Cascade they’re on, something needed to be broke down. And that was one of the big aha moments that allowed them to thrive with everything else after this is done.
STEP 2.
The next thing that everyone seems to need help with is the gut. 50 plus chronic diseases are rooted in your gut health! Dr Stephen Gundry, a world renowned cardiologist who wrote a book called gut check, says that in the six days a week that he still practices medicine, there isn’t one single chronic disease patient that he manages that does not have a dysbiotic gut. Your gut microbiome outnumbers your own unique human DNA, and so the the signals between the gut and the vagus nerve to the brain that are constantly communicating pain, stress trauma are the same as your own thoughts communicating pain stress and trauma.
Remember this, that the brain doesn’t know what’s happening. The brain relies on your thoughts, and when we say thoughts, it’s not just the words in your head. It’s also the instinct that you feel in your gut. You have neural cells. You have brain cells in your stomach that are connected to your brain through the vagus nerve, constantly communicating back up to the brain what’s going on. You also have neural cells, 40 million neural cells in your heart telling your brain what’s going on constantly through what we call emotion, the feelings that we feel. So between these three brains (brain, gut, heart), the brain now eventually knows what to do and will go do exactly what it’s told, which is why it’s so important to deal with the gut.
Your gut lining is made up of these small, fragmented components called tight wall junctions. So these junctions are able to open up, separate and close down and block and prevent things from exiting your gut wall, or very easily allow them to through permeability exit the gut wall. So there’s a bit of selective permeability, in terms of what can go through or not, our food supply, our stress, the toxins in our environment, break these junctions down and cause us to experience what we call leaky gut.
When you have leaky gut, the toxic substrates that your gut is meant to filter and prevent from entering your bloodstream seep right through this , which then leads to leaky brain(leaky brain is also caused by brain injuries). With brain injuries the vagus nerve gets disconnected and leads to gut dysregulation. Again why we start with nervous system health first. In leaky brain the blood brain barrier, which was not designed to deal with this level of toxic substrate, which is not passed through your digestive tract and broken down, but straight and raw in its original form, your blood brain barrier can’t block these things. That means they can directly leach into your brain and cause inflammation, anxiety, depression, brain fog, mood dysregulation, things that we treat as separate silo problems, all rooted in the same central core foundation of “I have poor gut health inflammation.”
We know that there’s a direct correlation between gut health and dementia. We know there’s a direct correlation between gut health and cardiovascular disease and also diabetes and also certain cancers. We know that 80% plus of your immune system is housed in your gut the resilience you need to thrive, whether it’s something as simple as a virus or something as complex as cancer, we all have cancer cells if you didn’t know, whether or not they express into more depends on our foundation. If your immune system is not thriving and flourishing, you’re not killing those cancer cells, and you’re relying on your gut health to determine whether or not your immune system is thriving. So until we deal with the gut, it’s very difficult to deal with everything else, starting with the mind. We deal with trauma, we deal with stress. The mind and the nervous system are toned down. The terrain is now better equipped to deal with healing.
The gut is built back up, the dysbiosis around the gut and the leaky gut wall and the top of the toxic substrates causing inflammation that is all toned down, and all sudden, chronic disease is less prevalent. It’s only when we get there that we’re now ready to deal with the problem at hand.
I want to age and not be restricted. I have pain. I need to get rid of it. My mood is off. My relationship is horrible. I’m depressed and I can’t go to work. All of these things get dealt with after we deal with these two. And in fact, once you deal with these two, you will find the problem itself as somewhat tampered down and is a smaller version of its original self. This is why we go in this sequence.
So as we’re going into this work with you, understand that it may be counterintuitive in terms of how we do things, but there’s a rhyme and a reason, because having worked with 1000s of people, I understand that this is the process that most everyone needs to go through.
Now, once we’re actually dealing with the problem at hand, how do we know what to do? Your health is a triangulation of your unique genetic code. Here’s what my body’s capable of, here’s how my body executes all these various jobs, from making hormones to making neuro chemicals to removing toxic chemicals in your body. I now know based on my DNA, how I do those things. So instead of prescribing what a problem is, I can prioritize what I need to work on. And let me state this, as a believer in Jesus Christ, I DO believe that he can change your faulty genes. He can do all things, so in general I recognize the limits of science and the limitless abilities of faith. In general, I would say though unless he guides you, that you don’t need to consistently check your genetic code. In the realm of science those don’t change, as its your blueprint. It helps us to navigate the needs we each uniquely have, however again I do believe that God can take limitations off as he wills.
It’s not you have an 80% chance of dementia based on your genes as an example, it’s your Alzheimer’s genetics don’t look optimal, let’s focus on this: lifestyle + prayer directives. What are the things that cause it? Let’s deal with those root causes and it can’t happen. Your unique genetics in the middle tell you what biology is broken, and then environment, nutrition and lifestyle being inputted on top of those unique genetics equal your net outcome.
What’s important as we go through all of this is that your genome doesn’t prescribe a problem. Some of you will say that I have this genetic propensity, but I don’t feel like this… Why? because you’re already doing it right. Some of you will say, Well, I have this genetic defense, but I don’t feel good because you’re overly doing it wrong. The human genome is designed to protect you from a homeostatic environment where things are already balanced, you’re not overly or under the burden. There’s a bit of a balance. And when you take that into today’s reality, where there’s an overburden, then all sudden, that even the genome itself in its best form, struggles. It’s in inundation with toxins and chemicals in our environment, as well as toxic spiritual climates. Our biology is struggling to keep up with an ever toxic world.
So know this, your genetic code, triangulated by environment, nutrition and lifestyle, is what equals your net outcome. And in the clinic we dive into what is the priority in the genome through a process called methylation, what are the things that stand out as red flags? What are then the recommendations for those in the three buckets of environment, nutrition and lifestyle, so that you run optimally. This is step 2, in my clinic is working uniquely through each persons methylation, by looking at their genetics, their lifestyle, lab markers and the person in front of me! We’ve found customization this way is so much more effective than just running a zillion labs and taking a zillion supplements.
That is how you find true health. Faith + Medicine. That is how you find true longevity. That is how you achieve the God given gift of 120 years as the Bible states that you already have. We are wired to live 120 years. It’s the mistakes we make that take years away. It’s not so much things you need to add( in the physical sense) to add years you already have. And know this, where there are mistakes there is more grace! I would say the addition of more grace through Jesus Christ is the only addition we need!
Now, longevity doesn’t need to be your goal. It could just be quality of life. It could be reversing a problem and feeling better not having to deal with something anymore. Irrespective of all that, the process is the same. We know that we need to deal with the acute turn off the fire. We know we need to optimize, get the terrain to its best state. We know then we can get ready for those biohacks and all the unique phenomenon that we now have in our technology that could give us the best, we know we need to start with the mind.
Trauma and Stress need to be unraveled. The body needs to move from fight or flight into rest and recovery and be ready to heal and regenerate. Only in this state will it regenerate. We know we need to deal with the gut. We need to stop that signal from the gut telling the brain through the vagus nerve, there’s a problem, another reason for fight or flight. We need the gut to stop leaking and to stop causing inflammation. We need that root cause to be tempered down. Then you move into here’s what I came here for. Here’s the problem I need to solve. I don’t feel good. My hormones are horrible. My mitochondria are terrible. My hair is falling out. I have acne. Whatever those things are are now ready to be fixed, because the terrain is ready to receive the benefit of all the work you’re going to do.
So that’s how we look at sequence. That’s how we look at cadence and how we implement things. It’s very important to bring this intention to the work that you’re going to do, so that all of what you learn gets laid out in a plan somewhat to the degree that I’ve said, without that intention, it’s too much or it’s too little. It’s distraction. It’s not knowing the priority. It’s focusing on the wrong things. This mindset will allow you to come in with the right intention, take in information the right way, apply it in the right places, and do it in the right frequency so it sticks!
And these are changes, not just band aids. So if I speak to what does good health look like when you’re done and this is all finished, and you found that you’ve reached your potential. How are you going to know? How are you going to know that I’ve done the job and I am healthy? There’s certain biomarkers, there’s pain points, there’s, you know, I don’t have inflammation anymore, the obvious. But what is your potential? If we know that fight or flight is the starting point, what is that better? The highest state the mind can attain, is authenticity, that authentic person who is your true self when you are walking around this world with not a care for anything other than what you believe in your heart, and that’s the truth that comes out of your mouth and your actions are as per what you believe. Are you able to achieve your God given calling authentically.
Finally Step 3.
The emotional.
Even though the emotional might be worked on throughout step 1 and 2, most of the time deep layers will be revealed once those are balanced. As a reminder since everyone is different these steps may be able to be changed, I’ve just found this method to work best. I’ll leave you with one big step to help you in this regard:
The state of gratitude. Gratitude is the opposite of anxiety. Gratitude is the opposite of trauma. Gratitude is this feeling where, when you can feel it, you truly know you achieved health, because the mind and the body are in a rest and recovery state, and everything you do is going to work. You’re also perceiving the world different, and this silent killer in the background is toned down. And why do I focus on this? If you look at the blue zones where people live to 100 plus, you’ll see a consistent trend. If you look at Japan, they use a word called ikegai. Ikegai means sense of purpose. In the city of Okinawa, where people always live over 100 they have this meaning that irrespective of their vocation, their job, they have a purpose in the community. I am the person that cleans the street. I’m the person that walks the kids from home from school. I’m the person that washes the windows voluntarily for the neighborhood and community working together, and that sense of purpose allows somebody to never feel stress, trauma and lack of fulfillment from the life that they’re living. This combined with a Harvard study, which points to the same habits of these people, Harvard tried to determine what is the number one thing we could find that a centenarian has somebody who lives to 100 that we don’t find regularly with other groups, and what’s that unique thing that we’ll find that we weren’t expecting? And the result of the study was that the people that live long with good health, not in a not in the disease state, had a less number of very high quality relationships. Now, both of these two things that I talked about, the ikagai, the sense of purpose, the very high quality loving relationships without the distractions of unneeded relationships, speak to less stress. Speaks to more oxytocin, healthy, beneficial hormones, less of the problematic cortisol. So you remove the bad and you’re increasing the good.
Very, very important, because gratitude is that feeling that you would feel if you’re in these two states. You’re thinking with your heart forward, as opposed to your mind. The bible states that out of the heart the mouth speaks. So, for many heart healing is a part of this process. To allow him into the places to truly heal. You’re not thinking the future with anxiety. You’re not thinking the past with depression. You’re present and you’re feeling gratitude. This is the feeling that when you have it, you’ll know you’ve achieved optimal health. So what does gratitude feel like? How do you know? I don’t mean the gratitude of give me, thank you, because the Give Me states of satisfaction. When you think of gratitude, what do you picture? You picture a sense of peace: I got what I want, you picture a sense of satisfaction that I got it exactly the way it needed to be and it gave me joy and pleasure. You picture support that I don’t have to do it, somebody did it for me. These are all give me states. These are not true gratitude. These are still laced with the flesh that is not the highest level.
What does true gratitude feel like? They’re not give me states, they’re give you. They’re I give more than I take. They’re I value tomorrow more than I value today, so the problems of today don’t mean much. They are, I value the lesson more than the act itself. And this is a big one. When you’re going through pain and you’re going through a test, and suppose you get a tax audit and you receive a letter in the mail, the difference between the world is over, leave me alone, versus I’m so happy that this is happening now because my business is growing, and I want to go through this now so that in five years when it happens again, I’m fully armed and equipped to deal with it. Or, I’m thankful that I get a chance to be tested in my faith, authority it Christ and that he will use it for the good. Gratitude.
It’s feeling in your heart, not just your mind, that sense when you can approach something with everything is beneficial for me, irrespective of how bad it feels, and I see the value in it. I believe it really ties in with identity that you are in a state of gratitude. You cast all your cares on HIM. You are not in a state of fight or flight. You are not driving the negative hormones and emotions that cause you to get stuck in fight or flight. But instead, you’re in rest of recovery.
So how do you do this? This can be different for different people depending on where they are at but, I’m going to you give you some challenges, so that you have some work to do at home. Picture yourself today: the present. Here’s me, I have a bubble. Some of you will see a six inch bubble. Some of you might see a 10 foot bubble. Here’s where I am today. This is all that’s going on: This is my kids. This is my ministry. This is my food. This is my finances. This is my car. This is my dinner tonight. All of the things that you’re thinking about that are relevant to the here and now, then you look out to the future and you see things that are not related to the present, but you know they’re coming. Here’s a birthday, here’s a new home that I’m gonna get, here’s a vacation that I have planned. Future, I don’t believe it to be real yet, but I do know it’s coming. Then there’s the past, which is this is this is no longer relevant for what I’m dealing with right now, whatever right now means to you, whether it’s an hour, a day or a month, but I know it happened, and I still use that information moving forward as a filter, because it really happened, and I’ve learned from it.
The problems of the past are where trauma come from. The problems of the future are where anxiety come from. You need to step back, visualize this bubble of the present and literally walk out of it. Allow God to highlight things to you by stepping back, and now elevate that timeline and throw it up into the air. And you can see it. Here’s today’s bubble, and here’s the past and here’s the future. I can see those milestones. I can see those impactful moments. They matter, and I can see them, and you start to look down that timeline, and you start to unwind those moments of stress and trauma. You ask the Lord, where’s the thing I’m holding on to, here’s that person, here’s that incident, and you go back to that time, and you go back to that time, and you go to that person, and you forgive. You forgive because there’s gratitude for what you experienced. You go back to that person that hurt you, or that incident that hurt you, the doctor that harmed you, or the thing that scared you, where you’re holding on to trauma, and you go to that location. You say to that person, “at that time it was overwhelming. At that time, this hurt me, and I held on to the pain to protect myself. I didn’t want this to happen again, and I know by holding on to the pain that I’ll prevent myself from causing this problem to myself again. But I misinterpreted this. I was deceived in thinking I could control/protect it. Now I want to forgive you. I want to forgive and I actually want to thank you, because this thing that you did to me made me who I am today. It’s because of this thing that I have this skill, that I have this tolerance, that I have this knowledge, that I have this wisdom, that I have this learning to teach other people. If God can forgive me for anything I’ve done, then I can forgive you.
And think about the victim versus the advocate, think about how the same exact thing could happen to two different people, and one person in trauma is the victim, and the other person who now overcame trauma and is experiencing gratitude, goes on stage and speaks above it. The same thing that burdens someone from coming out of bed is the thing they talk about to help other people. They take that problem and they turn it into an opportunity and teach people to benefit from it.
This is where you can learn the same thing yourself, and through that timeline forgive and turn into gratitude. Forgive and turn into gratitude. Forgive and turn into gratitude. Flip the script. Maybe theres some false identities you’ve taken on as a result of that unforgiveness, clear them out. And the fight or flight of the past doesn’t exist. Then you do the same thing in the future. All of what’s creating anxiety…Here’s something that I’m thinking about. I’m frustrated because I don’t have control. This is where anxiety comes from. I don’t control the outcome. There’s other people, there’s other scenarios, there’s other influences that create a sense of control and take it away from me. This is where you have to presence yourself, presence yourself, which means come back to this bubble and realize that this thing hasn’t even happened yet. The thing that I do now can change the outcome. I do have control. I have control in terms of my perception. I have control in terms of what this means and how it’s affecting my life today, I have to presence myself. What does presence yourself mean? Go hug somebody for 20 seconds and see how that raises your oxytocin levels. See that how in the state of love and gratitude, you can’t feel anxiety. In fact, this is scientific fact that anxiety and gratitude can’t happen at the same time. The same part of your brain that creates both cannot be doing two different jobs at once. Presence yourself in the presence of God. Control is often always masqueraded as fear. So when you allow God to address the fear that you are allowing, lies you’ve believed you break control and then reliquinsh control to him. Phil 4:6, says do not be anxious about anything, but bring all things by prayer and petition present your requests to God, and peace comes! This may need further work, but this is a great start.
So if you come back to the present and start having gratitude for all of what’s going on, it’s very hard to feel the anxiety the future. Additionally, You turn the fight or flight down, the rest and recovery is jammed right up, and all sudden, the body can thrive and you’re ready for all of what you’re going to learn.
Here’s a couple of additional things you can do in order to shift from stress and trauma to gratitude, there are things you can do right now, and they’re very powerful. They’re going to seem simple, but in their simplicity, the complexity of biology makes them beautiful, and they work if you were to simply write an handwritten appreciation note. Find that person that you never paused to thank, find that person that did something that helped you, and write them a meaningful handwritten note with your heart forward and truly thank them for the change they made for you. Truly thank them for the impact and literally, the change of the course of your life because of what they did. Spend time on this. Think through it. Don’t make it two lines. Make it a full page. Give them details on how they change your life. The act of that itself unlocks pain and trauma and puts you into a gratitude state where it’s very hard to feel anxiety. You passing that note onto someone, the act of love, those high quality relationships I was talking about, and what that’s going to do to change your hormones and get you ready to receive the benefit. Do it this week. Find that person. Write out that handwritten note. Make it deep. Make it a page long. Thank them. Let them know how your life has changed because of what they did for you.
Second thing you can do, find that person that needs something and get it for them. Give someone a gift. Find that person that you know could benefit from something, but they’re not doing it. They either can’t afford it, they’re too busy, they’re procrastinating. They don’t take care of themselves, and they don’t self care and value themselves. Go get them that gift. Get them that gift that they’re not expecting. Hand it over and show them how valuable they are and how you have gratitude for what they’ve done for you to the point where you want to gift them something which is the exact thing they needed to get them out of whatever they’re dealing with. This is a powerful, powerful thing that will allow you to feel gratitude, that will allow you to feel that love and connection, that oxytocin, that will teach you that in today’s world where we don’t get quality, what quality feels like, so that you do more of the same, it’s a new habit you wanted to develop, and you may decide to do it more and more. You’re going to feel so good when you do it, because you are becoming more like Christ.
Third, you can start journaling before you go to bed at night. And in fact, when we talk about sleep, one of the things we talk about is journaling to break down traumas and stress, to allow people to then not have a cortisol response, which keeps them awake at night. So one thing you could do is before you go to sleep, buy a nice, beautiful notebook, put it in a location where you’re going to use it, and journal your gratitude for the day. Teach your body to think about the world in this way. Teach your heart to come forward, teach yourself to be present, to not be stuck to the traumas of the past, to not be stuck in the anxieties of the future. Be thankful for today and write it down hand. Write it into a journal book, and maintain that log and do it every night. Thank the Lord for giving rest to his beloved now, and that you’ve done everything you could do during the day, and now he can continue and execute it.
Try and do one of these three things this week, and you’ll see that prior to us even getting anything started, you’re going to feel a higher sense of yourself, as if you’ve healed, because you’re going to get out of fight or flight and you’re going to get into rest and recovery. We’re all stuck there until you actively work on your nervous system. Your nervous system needs work. We all need this work.
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Now, why do we know that this all works at a scientific level? Your genes, your DNA or your code. These are the instructions that your cells receive. 50 trillion cells that read this human instruction manual to understand how to do all their jobs. What we know is that we haven’t seen evidence of genetic evolution in humans, meaning theres no “new genees”. There’s potential variants of different genes and there’s sort of a Russian roulette of what version did I get? How did it get passed on to me? But there’s no change. There’s no new genes. There’s no evolution. Having said this, when somebody goes through trauma, problems, learnings, and they cannot create evolution or genetic alteration(just science speaking here), how does the next generation benefit from that? How does that same generation not experience the same problem and have the same mistake? Epigenetics and being a NEW creation in Christ Jesus.
There’s something called the epigenome. Epi means on top. So here’s your genetic code. Your epigenome is the constant expression of those genes, meaning I have version C of a certain gene, which means I do this job at this level. Now, given an input, the same inputs I mentioned before, environment, nutrition, lifestyle, the expression of this gene will change. When I add a food, add a stressor, smell something, hug somebody, this gene will express differently and start to do the job differently to give me exactly what I want in that moment. Now, there’s some epigenetic expression that is somewhat permanent, including trauma. There’s a very famous study of the children and grandchildren of holos, of Holocaust survivors. It’s one of the best known epigenetic studies. And what did we learn from that? We learned that the Ashkenazi Jewish people who were living in parts other than where these problems happened outside of Germany, now mostly in the United States, where the study was done, there’s some cliche of neuroticism around this community, and what was actually going on, that the people that went through this impactful stimulus, this trauma of the Holocaust years on end of living in this way, passed on to their children an epigenetic expression that you need to be ready for this reality. Here’s what I went through, and it was so impactful that my genes and my children are going to express at a higher degree, meaning constantly on edge, to be aware and not make the mistake of the pain that caused the trauma, which now put them in a different context, where the traumas in there translates as neuroticism. Every little detail matters, constantly on edge, constantly questioning, constantly skeptical, because the epigenetic expression is trying to protect them from another holocaust.
This is why it’s so important to break down trauma, and allow God to highlight these things. It’s not only you, it’s your children, it’s your grandchildren. Epigenetics will express for seven generations, so you need to break it down and fix it, to fix other generations, starting with yourself. This is how we know it works, and this is why we know it does work, because the epi genome would be turned down if there’s no trauma to protect you from, if the brain knows that this thing wasn’t actually a bad news it may have felt bad, but it was actually something that I have gratitude for. Well, maybe it’s not what I thought it was.
Now the way we deal with this is different for different people, based on genetic programming and other factors of discernment. But there’s things, for example, like the ADRalpha2B gene, makes that person bind onto trauma more aggressively than others. And so they’re going to remember the feeling as if it’s a continuation of the last time. Some people don’t bind onto trauma and so they’re going to make that same mistake multiple times and hurt themselves truly, which in itself, will lead to trauma expression and trauma retention. Some people have poor neuroplasticity, and so they give things a lot of meaning. And so there’s a weight to things, a shell shock, a ruminating that voice in my head I can’t stop talking to myself about it very different than trauma. This is more, again, about meaning. These are ways I also believe the enemy can use against us, if we don’t have the Lord change some of these patterns and equip us with more grace to overcome them.
So to recap, true healing is a two year journey. Functional healing is not, here’s the problem, here’s the prescription. Functional healing is here’s the problem, Why did it happen? What was the root cause? And as we start to unravel, it’s probably not just one, it’s probably many root causes, like we just described for everybody, nervous system, gut, and then the actual problem itself. So this two year journey you’re going to go on, we can try and compress, like we said, to a shorter time frame, because with your DNA, we know what’s going wrong. We know what biology is broken and what to prioritize, to pray into. And then again, that word is key, prioritize. It’s not about learning everything and doing everything. It’s about knowing. The intention is, I’m coming into this to learn it all. I want to know everything that’s wrong and everything that’s good. But then I got a plan how to roll it out. I’m not going to do it all. I’m going to find that lowest hanging fruit. I’m going to start with my mind, and then going to fix my gut, and then I’m going to move on to the rest of the body, and I’m going to plan this out over a number of months, to first deal with the acute problem, get the terrain ready. Let’s put the fire out.
I’m then going to optimize I can start adding these supplements. I can start dealing with foods. I can start training a little heavier. I’m gonna get myself into my best form. I am then ready for the longevity hacks. I am then ready to start watching the YouTube videos and then start and then ready to go beyond my vitamin DS and Cs into, you know, mitochondrial health regulation and other things that your body maybe didn’t wouldn’t have been in it from on day one, when it wasn’t ready, the terrain wasn’t set and ready. This is a sequence we’re going to go through by the time we’re done, I believe you will find your genetically optimized self. You’ll know exactly what to prioritize, what to do about it. I believe you’ll find the best version of yourself. I believe it’ll be very difficult for the body to have chronic disease, because the reasons why chronic disease happened will all be resolved, and you won’t give the enemy a footstool. I believe your relationships will get better. I believe your finances will improve. Because when you’re in optimal physical and mental health, when the nervous system and the body are aligned and they’re doing their best, it is much easier to thrive in your work. It is much easier to go into a meeting and not get frustrated and leave it is much easier to put the energy in and have resilience and endurance during the day to do all of what you need to do. I also believe that your hormones are going to be balanced, and you’re going to feel a way that you haven’t felt before. I also believe that you’re going to sleep better, and in your sleep, you’re going to recover, which means that the next day, you’re going to feel better, and so on and so on and so on.
The thinking around systems versus symptoms is all of what we’re talking about here. And when those systems get optimized, because we got the terrain better ready, we put in the right solutions, we’ve prioritized what your DNA exactly is calling for you, and these systems are now firing properly, then it doesn’t matter what the symptom is, anymore, because a symptom didn’t happen until an environment, nutrition or lifestyle choice was misaligned with your unique genetic code and a system started to fail, if not many systems. Things got out of alignment mechanically, chemically or emotionally/spiritually.
