When I started this blog I imagined it as a place to come for really practical tips for brain retraining. However, I’m finding I have the gift of the yap when writing and get distracted by flowing thoughts. These are some practical ways I’ve been able to move into the present and surrender and accept the pace at which my body is healing:

• A lot of my healing has come from using a visualisation technique I learnt from DNRS, which involves visualising a past memory. These are supposed to be happy and joyful memories, I noticed that I was exclusively using moments from my “pre-illness” period. I decided to start challenging myself and using more recent memories, where I previously had a strong association with illness and saw these memories as tarnished. This taught my brain that things can be beautiful and difficult at the same time, but I can train my brain to focus on the positive. I learnt that I can be in the present and enjoy it, even when it’s not perfect. It helped my brain to move away from having a strong emotional tie to illness.
• The DNRS visualisation technique also involves doing visualisations of the future. When I first started I would make up visualisations that were very far in the future when I was “fully-healed”. I decided to change this and started using visualisations of myself in my current environment, doing everyday things such as going for walks to the beach, cooking, walking to the shops and focusing on how beautiful it is where I’m at in my life right now. This trained my brain to appreciate the present and as a result when I was actually doing these things throughout the day I felt far more present and grateful. Whenever I find myself feeling frustrated with where I’m at I will intentionally add in some visualisations like this, focusing on the small, beautiful moments within each day.
• Consistent gratitude journalling has helped me with this, I try to journal almost every night focusing on specific moments and things I am grateful for. These aren’t just one line bullet points but long, flowing paragraphs where I express love, appreciation and joy for all the beauty in my life. With time as my brain has learnt how to be more and more grateful these entries have been getting longer and longer (if you’re an avid reader of my blog you’ll see that this training probably isn’t helping me make my blog posts more succinct). This taught me how to stop and appreciate birdsong, enjoy the warmth of the sun on my skin, notice the pretty flowers on my daily walks, and actually feel that joy in my body, not just feel as though I SHOULD feel joyful.
• Whenever I feel frustrated I take a moment and look back at where I’ve come from and try to focus on that, knowing how far I’ve come allows me to trust and surrender into a sense of knowing that I am going in the right direction.
• I personally stopped counting how many months I had been doing DNRS (I have to go back and think and count for each blog post), this also helped me to stop comparing to the healing journeys that others are on.
• In the earlier days of brain retraining when I hadn’t yet seen progress I spent a lot of time on the DNRS Community Forum reading other healing stories and reminding myself if they could heal, so could I!
• Sometimes I just need to put on ‘Vienna’ by Billy Joel and really bask in the line, ‘Slow down you’re doing fine, you can’t be everything you want to be before your time’ (fun fact, I started this blog post whilst visiting Vienna, another full circle moment for me and my healing)
• I love the mantra, ‘I’m at peace with my pace and where I’m at’
• I like to remind myself that every ‘ebb’ or setback is actually just an opportunity to teach the nervous system a deeper feeling of safety and healing. If I can surrender and accept it, this is going to allow the nervous system to relax more and allow my body to heal faster
• I did a lot of visualisation mood boards using canva to help motivate me with my practice, I noticed with time these have shifted from ticking off goals to a state of being. For example I used to have pictures of people running or places I want to travel to. Naturally with time these have shifted to images that evoke a state of being, such as an image of someone peacefully picking flowers, or pictures of friends smiling together. Now, I have consciously shifted my goals towards this and have let go of the idea that I need to tick off boxes to be healed.
• Another factor to remember is that true and deep healing can take time. Coming to nervous system work after years of being ingrained with unhelpful ways of thinking, behaving and being means my brain needs time to change. Years of patterned thinking can’t be reversed overnight. Even though you mightn’t see the change physically, underneath the brain is changing and building new pathways. It reminds me of this video of an engineer learning to ride a bike that has its handles on ‘backwards’, when he turns left, the bike goes right. It takes 8 months for his brain to create the new pathways that allow him to ride the bike. Healing is the same, there’s a lot of change going on underneath, and trusting in the process and surrendering to the idea that it’s going to take as long as it needs to take helps with the process. The exciting thing about neuroplasticity though is that, we are laying the foundation for healing that’s going to stick with us for the rest of our lives if we want it too! How freaking awesome is that?!
• On this note, I also like to remind myself that it takes time to heal because I am not cutting corners, I am doing a full nervous system rewire. This comforts me to know that by taking the time to heal it means I am doing it properly.
• In my daily mantras I would say to myself, “you are exactly where you need to be”, reminding myself in this way helped me.
• Another encouraging read for me was in Joe Dispenza’s book, ‘Becoming Supernatural’. He tells the story of a woman who didn’t see physical changes for a year after implementing new ways of thinking and consistent work using Joe Dispenza’s teachings, but she knew that it was because her body had been in that old programming for so long and just needed more time to catch up. When it did catch up her healing was astonishing! Her trust and belief was inspiring and allows me to also tap into that knowing that it’s coming! My brain is learning change after a near decade of being stuck in a chronic illness pattern.
• This is a repetitive theme in my blog, but when I’m feeling frustrated I make sure I validate that feeling, “of course you’re feeling frustrated Alex, anyone in your situation would, is it serving you in this moment to stay in that emotion? What’s a higher feeling we can try to move towards?”

Note: My blog may contain some affiliate links. I will be paid a commission if you use this link to make a purchase at no extra cost to you. I only link to products or programs I have personally used