This is my honest review of DNRS after a bit over 20 months in the program. Prepare yourself, this review may seem melodramatic at some points, but I am truly not exaggerating when I say that this program has changed my life. Physically my health is the best it has been in almost a decade, but emotionally and spiritually this program has changed many aspects of my life in totally unexpected ways. I came for symptom relief, and have benefited with so much more. I will be forever grateful to this program.

*NOTE: DNRS was my launching pad into nervous system regulation and I have since completed parts of Primal Trust and added in additional tools & practices that I’ve discovered through my own research & with trial and error. My improvements have come from all of this work and it’s impossible to separate which improvements are from what specific practice, however, DNRS was the bulk of my practice for 12-18 months. I also wouldn’t have had the capacity to explore any other tools without DNRS laying the groundwork for me

What is DNRS?

DNRS or Dynamic Neural Retraining System is a neuroplasticity-based program for chronic illness recovery. It used to be available on a DVD but now there is an online version called DNRS 2.0. The program costs around US$350 and contains 12 hours of content. The videos teach various techniques for healing limbic system impairment, which they explain is the root cause of many chronic health conditions. They then recommend practicing these techniques for a minimum one hour per day for 6 months.

To be perfectly honest, I had heard of DNRS a few times throughout my chronic illness journey and I always thought, “yeah right, they watched some videos, changed their thoughts and they healed!?” I didn’t understand the science and was very dismissive of the program. It took me a long time to come around. The first section of the program (which is available on their free trial) explains the science behind how the brain can cause physical symptoms. They acknowledge that symptoms are very real, debilitating and physical but that healing can come from brain retraining. Once I understood this properly, I realised it was exactly what I needed!

What Does the Program Involve?

The initial videos teach you various techniques that help to rewire your brain. The main technique is called a ‘round’, this involves a few steps where you talk to your brain and limbic system and then end with some visualisations. Each round should last 15-20 minutes and they recommend spending one hour per day on rounds.

They also teach you how to retrain your thoughts so that they are wired towards healing, and strategies for elevating your emotional state. Both of these are also key parts of nervous system regulation.

After you watch the initial videos the real healing comes from practicing their method everyday. They also offer extra classes for another fee, to help support your practice and a private forum where you can connect with others and clarify any questions that come up. I have written more about these below.

Symptom Improvements

Before I started DNRS I was desperately searching for answers for my physical health. These are some changes I have experienced:

• Dramatic improvement in brain fog. This was a symptom I had struggled to shift and prior to starting DNRS had been my worst symptom for almost 8 years. About 2 months into the program I felt this symptom start to ease, it has steadily been improving since. Somebody explained that all the blood flow in my brain was going to the threat centre in the brain (the limbic system) instead of the thinking part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex), and after a few months of daily rounds it’s almost as though I could feel a softening in my brain and my prefrontal cortex was waking back up. I am able to concentrate with much more ease and for longer periods of time, I don’t dissociate and zone out during conversations anymore. This is one area of my health I am incredibly grateful to be experiencing improvements in, as it stopped me from participating in many aspects of life and greatly diminished my quality of life. It’s not quite 100% yet but I have full faith that it will with more nervous system regulation. Also, now a lot of my improvement with this is coming from actually using my brain and putting myself in more cognitively challenging situations so that it can regain its full power (I have been using an app called BrainHQ for this, as well as studying, blogging etc to push myself). After years of it being in hibernation it will take time to build it back up, however, this is only possible because of the improvements I am experiencing from nervous system regulation
• My fatigue has improved out of sight!! My energy levels are the best they’ve been in almost a decade. I have completed 5 hour hikes, I go to pilates regularly, I average 10k steps a day, I don’t nap during the day and I can solo-travel with easy. I feel a lightness when doing these activities and the malaise that was my constant companion has faded away. I can wake up for the sunrise and spend the whole day out of the house. I can do so much more than I was able to prior to starting DNRS
• My hormones have improved. My SHBG was persistently high for years and that has normalised. My periods used to completely debilitate me and my cycle controlled my life. It would affect me for a week prior to my period with fatigue and then during with pain. I would also have huge flares in brain fog and other symptoms with my cycle. I tried a lot of supplements and treatments to heal this without any relief, and did a lot of expensive testing with integrative medicine trying to figure this out with barely any improvements. This has steadily improved since starting DNRS. This is another very exciting improvement that has greatly increased my quality of life
• As many with fatigue type issues know, getting blood tests to track progress is difficult. However, a few blood tests have improved for me, including: thyroid markers, protein levels, iron panels, comprehensive stool tests, hormone tests
• I don’t take any herbs or antibiotics for Lyme or chronic stealth infections anymore. I previously took these for 5+ years, including IV antibiotics. Actively treating infections with herbs and antibiotics was one of the only ways I experienced improvements prior to DNRS
• One symptom that I never understood was my sensitivity to smells. It was explained to me that my body was in fight/flight and my senses were heightened because they were constantly trying to detect danger. This explanation was the first time this symptom made sense. It also helped explain my extreme sound sensitivity that I had experienced in the earlier days of my recovery (I used to watch TV almost on mute and nobody in my family except me could hear it). I felt shifts in my sensitivity to smells a few weeks into DNRS
• When I started DNRS I was also recovering from post concussion syndrome. When I initially had the concussion I had a whole bunch of symptoms reappear overnight, these were symptoms I previously believed were from Lyme and didn’t understand how they could reappear that quickly and dramatically. This made me wonder if there was some truth to the idea that I had a dysregulated nervous system. I did some other treatments at the same time for it, but I believe treating my post concussion symptoms with DNRS helped immensely. About two months in I woke up one day and the post concussion symptoms were completely gone, it felt as thought a switch had flicked in my brain. It felt like neuroplasticity in action and that my brain had decided to go down the new pathways I had been building.
• When I have colds or acute illnesses my body is able to recover more quickly. When I have other setbacks or down patches with my health my body is also stronger and able to bounce back with more ease. This is continuing to improve
• I still have certain symptoms but my relationship to them is different, and DNRS has given me tools to cope with the ups and downs that I still experience at times. I also know that with continued work on my nervous system these will continue to lessen and disappear, I have full faith that eventually all my symptoms will be gone
• I still see my integrative doctor, focus on food-as-medicine, take supplements and see some supportive therapists such as my osteopath and a lymph massage therapist. Since implementing DNRS I have noticed my body is far less reactive to certain treatments and is able to integrate some supplements and medications with a lot more ease. I also see all of this work as supportive as my nervous system heals. I am grateful to have the resources to support my body in this way, and I believe everything I do is helping. However, after years of doing lots of supplements, medications and diets without nervous system work, I can see and feel the profound difference it has made. If I could only afford one treatment it would definitely be nervous system regulation! I have also cut back on a lot of supplements and medication and am not reliant on anything, whereas before they were my lifeline, and I had a lot of fear around needing to do everything I could for my body. Now it’s all just another way of loving and supporting myself.

Emotional & Spiritual Changes

• After two weeks in the program I felt hope for the first time in years. It was true and real hope, I believed I could make a full recovery and live a vibrant and energetic life, totally free from illness.
• Neuroplasticity and brain retraining has equipped me with tools to improve my confidence and self-love. I didn’t realise how much guilt and shame I was carrying around due to my health history. I know now that people are lucky to have me in their lives. I feel as though I am growing into a more empowered version of myself and moving past limiting core beliefs that I used to tell myself such as, “who could love a sick person like you”. DNRS has provided me with a framework to work through limiting core beliefs.
• I am connecting more deeply with my true self and inner essence. With this I am learning how to worry less about being seen, and caring less about what people think. This is allowing me to lean more deeply into what I truly love and enjoy. I am learning to make choices in my life that come from a place of love and groundedness without the influence of my ego (a constant work in progress). Many areas of my life are better because of this, I have more confidence in sharing myself with the world and chasing my dreams
• I am more conscious and present in my life, and this is an incredible gift!
• I feel the happiest and most content I’ve felt in years. I have learnt how to go within and feel inner peace and contentedness, regardless of my daily symptoms or other external stressors. I am more grounded and resilient when the unexpected pops up
• Having a different perspective and approach to life has changed how I experience it. My experience of certain things may be the same, but with a mindset shift my experience of the experience is different. I love approaching life in this way. For example, I used to be really highly strung around my diet, and this caused a lot of stress. Now I basically eat the same diet, but my mindset is one of loving and supporting my body, instead of seeing certain foods through the lens of fear
• Speaking of fear, I have removed a lot of it from my life. I used to fear I wouldn’t heal, or fear if I didn’t take my supplements and do all my treatments perfectly then I wouldn’t heal. Life is much more peaceful seeing the world with love instead of fear
• I am learning to be less reactive and more responsive which is making my life and relationships far more peaceful and stable. My housemate says I bring “zen vibes” to our place – a comment that never would have said to me before
• I am learning to train away perfectionist and borderline OCD tendencies. This is making my life a lot calmer and has a positive impact on those around me as it has made me more easygoing
• I am becoming more conscious and aware of previously subconscious patterns of behaviour and changing these to better serve me
• I used to describe myself as “easily annoyed” and I was especially triggered by other people, with more nervous system capacity all those little things don’t bother me anymore
• There is more stillness and peace in my mind and I have stopped ruminating and letting myself get stuck in looping thoughts patterns. I used to overthink about everything and over-intellectualise my problems. For example, I used to see a therapist and we would go around in circles talking about things, and I understood everything but I would never change. Regulating my nervous system has given me the capacity to ACTUALLY change. I now like to live my life from my heart and not my head
• I have more capacity for stress and know the more I regulate, the more my body can cope with various stressors. My relationship to stress and external factors has changed for the better. In the past I would blame things outside me for how I was feeling
• I feel a growing capacity to be able to surrender to things that I can’t change. Leaning into this place of surrender has truly allowed my nervous system to relax and move into a parasympathetic state, and has lead to profound shifts in my health and well-being. The ability to let go in different areas of my life has made it far more peaceful and enjoyable
• I trust myself more and my intuition is developing
• I can see the positive and choose higher level thought patterns automatically, this is the magic of neuroplasticity in action!! It makes life far more enjoyable and brings me more happiness and contentment

Pros of the DNRS Program

• The DNRS community is truly amazing and inspiring! I can never think of enough adjectives to describe how beautiful, heartwarming, motivating, kind and flipping awesome other DNRS participants are. I’ve never been connected to a community that has had this kind of impact on my life, I am constantly moved by their bravery and commitment to healing. Spending time with people who have been through incredible hardship but are CHOOSING to be positive and to commit to healing themselves is very, very special.
• DNRS have a private forum and this was a lifeline for me when I first started and didn’t really believe that it could help me. Whenever I had self-limiting thoughts come up I would go on there and read uplifting stories that inspired me to continue practicing. It’s also a great resource for asking questions, sharing ideas and connecting with others. I am pretty sure it’s free to join, even if you haven’t yet purchased the program and I highly recommend going on and reading the success stories on there
• DNRS offer extra classes called DNRS Living to help engage with and practice the content. DNRS Living involves zoom classes for one hour a week, for 12 weeks, these are run by a DNRS facilitator who is always a recovered ex-DNRS participant. The structure includes: an intro where people from the group share any wins they’ve had, then it moves into questions, each week a few people from the class are given a turn to ask a question about the program. I always learnt a lot from the great questions others would bring. Then they have a group discussion question, for example “how did you elevate your mood this week?”. These questions are great for sharing and I always got some fun ideas from them. DNRS Living was truly invaluable and allowed me to develop my practice and understand the content more deeply. It also helped me to stay motivated to keep practicing and to feel less alone in my journey. I am still in touch with many friends I met through these groups
• DNRS also offer Share-A-Laugh classes. These are incredibly funny and have been a fun way to elevate my emotional state. They basically involve fake laughter (which then for me, becomes real) as well as some breathing and polyvagal exercises. At first, I thought they were cheesy and a bit silly, but as my brain changed I learnt to love silly. They have really helped me to heal and they also improved the excessive adrenaline rushes I used to experience. Again, it’s a fun way of connecting with the DNRS community and is a very heartwarming experience. I love seeing the same faces showing up each day, and also seeing those faces change and become brighter as they start to heal. These are very affordable too, with a monthly fee you can do unlimited classes during the week.
• I love the simplicity of the program. I have seen a lot of criticism of DNRS that is aimed at the fact it teaches top-down practices (brain retraining) but not bottom-up practices such as polyvagal and somatic work. For me personally, I am glad it doesn’t include all of that. Most of us coming to DNRS are coming out of freeze states and simplicity is a necessity. I personally had tried the Gupta Program for months prior to DNRS and whilst that may suit a lot of people, for me the many options and different exercises it offered was overwhelming. I needed simple instructions
• I love that they tell you to practice an hour a day. I personally needed strict instructions to build a consistent habit at the start as my motivation levels were so low that the “try your best, leave the rest” instructions from the Gupta Program meant I was just leaving the rest and doing nothing to heal my nervous system. Again, for others this may be a con, and a gentler approach might be preferred, but my brain needed the strict instructions
• I like that it comes from a place of science. I needed that at the start to buy into it. A more esoteric or spiritual approach probably would have turned me off. Now that I’ve experienced the mind-body connection in action, I can do other more spiritually minded programs. However, when I started the program I was heavily ingrained with a western medicine way of thinking and needed all of the science. DNRS presents a lot of science and it’s in a very factual and almost clinical way, this worked for me
• Personally, I love the structure of the rounds and the focus on visualisation. I love the creativity required and enjoy visualising and coming up with little scenarios in my head to incorporate in my rounds. I’ve always been a bit of a day-dreamer so it suits me.

Cons of the DNRS Program

• DNRS doesn’t teach you how to process emotions, but I truly believe that it’s not it’s job to do that. DNRS teaches you how to move away from emotions in order to heal your nervous system. I believe processing emotions is a more nuanced experience that is hard to teach across the board. The regimented approach to redirecting thoughts and emotions is beneficial as it allows the nervous system to build capacity. Now that I have regulated my nervous system using DNRS, I have the space to explore releasing emotions. I had to build my capacity and resilience before I could do this, and it would have been counter productive if I had tried to do this when I was in my freeze state. However, I do think at times the DNRS program ONLY teaches you to move away from emotions, and there comes a time when that can be a detrimental to healing (I have spoken about this more in this post here)
• Another con that many people criticise DNRS for is that it only teaches a top down approach and doesn’t include somatics or bottom up practices. Again, I believe bottom up practices are incredibly valuable and have since integrated them into my practice, but I am glad it’s not included within DNRS because it would cause overwhelm. I enjoy the DNRS Share-A-Laugh classes and they do a great job of including some bottom up exercises in a very organic way that doesn’t add any pressure to the healing process
• It is quite regimented and this may cause stress for some people. I believe nervous system regulation shouldn’t be stressful as this is totally counterproductive. For me personally, this wasn’t a problem as I came to DNRS knowing I would add my own flair to it. My coach Tessa Malcarne isn’t a DNRS coach so that also gave me the flexibility and assurance to only do what resonated with me. For example, I have basically never intentionally used the ‘Incremental Training’ pillar that DNRS teaches. I also never trigger myself before a round. Adding my own touch to the program has worked for me, but it isn’t encouraged by the program
• There is a heavy focus on visualisation and I know this isn’t for everyone. If visualisations don’t particularly resonate with you, then another program may be more suitable. However, it’s important to note this may be limbic resistance and will improve as your brain changes (our brains love to tell us anything to prevent us from changing and ‘I don’t like visualisations’ is a common one)

In summary, DNRS is a program I enthusiastically recommend. Whilst it is incredible for healing almost any chronic illness, I truly believe anyone living in our modern, stress driven world would benefit from it. Perhaps the greatest silver lining of my experience with illness is that it took me to a point of desperation that made me commit to nervous system regulation in a way that somebody without chronic illness wouldn’t, which has lead to so many life-changing benefits beyond just the physical. I am forever grateful to DNRS for the changes it has brought to my life, this is real, neuroplastic change that’s going to be with me for the rest of my life.

People often come to me and ask what it was that lead to my drastic health improvements. Or they come to me for advice on health issues they are having, knowing that I’ve tried many different treatments. My number one recommendation is always nervous system regulation and I always recommend DNRS. After all the treatment that I did I believe nervous system regulation is the root cause, and I am incredibly grateful that I was able to find this missing puzzle piece and work towards true healing

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