As I’ve continued my journey of brain retraining and recovery, I’ve come to realise that I’ve experienced significant healing as I’ve distanced myself from the notion of a ‘training zone’.

When I first started retraining there was a clear distinction between things I was able to do, or what was within my ‘training zone’, and those activities that I wasn’t yet capable of. I started to realise that classing activities in this way allowed it to become a self-limiting belief. Of course I couldn’t run if it wasn’t in my ‘training zone’, because I was imposing that belief on myself and letting my conscious and subconscious mind believe that. I would find myself saying to people, “No, I can’t run yet”, and whilst I would do future visualisations where I was running, and believed I would be in the future, in my mind it was not yet in my ‘training zone’, and wasn’t truly a possibility. I remember watching some people exercising at the beach one morning and I realised that in my mind they were “over there”, but I was stuck “over here” in my healing, my mind had a clear distinction between “them” and “me” and in essence, was holding me back.

For me, getting rid of the idea of a ‘training zone’, meant removing any rigidity and structure around what I could or couldn’t do. If I was partaking in a new activity, I didn’t make a big deal of it, I acted like I did in my visualisations where these were totally normal things for me to be doing. I didn’t allow my brain to ruminate and worry about if I was overdoing something, or if it was more activity than planned, I just tried my best to be present in the moment and enjoy what I was doing. I didn’t set up an incremental training plan, or have any structure around my training, I just did what felt right, or participated in situations that arose, and soothed my nervous system and used all my tools whilst doing so.

Because of my fatigue dominant symptom picture, a lot of this manifested as removing intentional rest periods and doing more in my day. I noticed when I did this, and didn’t focus on comparing if I had the same amount of rest as before, and just focused on the LIVING part, I had great progress. This was supercharged when traveling because my mind was distracted by the newness of my environments which meant my usual routines and hidden self limiting beliefs were disrupted. Another strategy that works for me is doing new activities with friends (even better if they don’t know your health history!), I find I get distracted by the social aspect which keeps my mind away from ruminating on if I am ‘overdoing’ it.

Another thing I noticed, was that when I was doing future visualisations, I would sometimes hear a little voice saying, “No, you can’t do that!”. Whenever this happened, I knew I had struck gold. I would challenge myself to keep repeating these visualisations until that little voice went away. Then, I would challenge myself more by doing that same visualisation but in the more immediate future and ask myself, ‘Why can’t I do that right now? What is stopping me from trying this tomorrow?”

These are tricky areas to navigate, because of course, sometimes your body is not yet ready for certain activities, but it’s never going to be ready if you don’t truly open your mind to the possibility of it happening. I think it is great to self-inquire and see where we may be imposing limiting beliefs on ourselves, and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where something becomes stuck outside our ‘training zone’ because we have let it. Your progress is only going to go as far as you allow yourself to dream and truly believe. At the same time, if something is too much today, that’s ok too, we surrender and gracefully accept that without getting frustrated. Pushing ourselves is an art form, there is no right or wrong, but inquiry and pondering the concept of your ‘training zone’ may illuminate areas where you may be holding yourself back.

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