What is MindBody Coaching?
MindBody Coaching is a technique used to guide people in understanding and reconnect their mind and body for the purpose of treating conditions such as of ME/CFS, Fibromyalgia, Long Covid, Post-viral Fatigue, IBS, anxiety, insomnia, migraines, depression and other chronic or unexplained conditions and symptoms.
Beyond the impact on symptoms it can also help us to feel more connected to ourselves, reduce stress or overwhelm and develop a sense of trust in ourselves. This allows us to connect with our purpose and create a life we are passionate about.
I take an holistic approach to health and empower people to make changes in their life that rebuild connections between their emotional, mental and physical selves leading to improved health and wellbeing.
MindBody coaching follows a basic framework but is also a personalised experience as what everyone needs is unique. I would support you in increasing your capacity to feel sensations and emotions in your body and we would use this as a guide in taking action in your life. This affects the messages the brain is receiving and sending to help change patterns that may not be serving you. In this way this approach draws on techniques from somatics, life coaching and brain retraining, amongst other things. This process is not just about knowledge and theory- it is about embodiment, action and practice, this is the way we really impact our body and mind in a lasting way.
The techniques I use are drawn from my personal, lived experience and 6 years of coaching people as well as teachers including Staci Haines, Rae Johnson, Kae Cheng Thom and Clare Caldwell. It also draws on the knowledge of many indigenous cultures- for most of the world the mind and body have never been separate.
What role do the mind and body have in creating illness?
The role of our mind and body is to keep us safe, both physically and emotionally. When working well together they sense what is happening in a situation and we use that information to respond appropriately to protect ourselves and increase our chance of survival and fulfilment.
Difficult events in our lives can cause a disruption in the feedback loop between the mind and body to and these messages can be lost or ignored, often generating an overwhelm of emotions or leaving us in a state of emotional numbness. There is no clear message getting to our brain so we end up in a constant state of survival mode, where it is preparing us to use all our resources to survive a potential threat but because the threat is internal we get stuck in a constant state of preparation, leading to a feeling of being stressed or disconnected and eventually generating symptoms of illness.
In scientific terms...
This is known as psychoneuroimmuniology- the interaction between thoughts and feelings and our nervous and immune systems (or our psychological and physical selves). The hypothalamus in the brain is responsible for homeostasis- our ability to maintain internal stability whilst responding to what's going on outside of us, for example causing us to shiver in order to warm up the body when it's cold outside. The hypothalamus picks up on signals throughout the body through our nervous system so that it knows when we need more or less hormones, glucose or oxygen, for example. When we are in a crisis situation our sympathetic nervous system is activated (also known as fight/flight/freeze mode) where some of our body systems become very active in order to respond to an emergency and others partially shut down to reserve energy. When the hypothalamus can't clearly receive these messages, because of a disconnect causing some emotions to be repressed, we can experience this activation or reduction of various body systems as symptoms of illness that often cannot be measured medically.
The good news is that although our brains can change to create this disconnect, often leading to chronic illness, they can also change back. This is known as neuroplasticity- the brains ability to reorganise itself.
Changing the way we think and feel through the mindbody techniques can support our brain to reorganise in a way that leads to a healthier and more fulfilling life.
