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Here are some key advantages:
1. Adaptability and Learning:
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections. This adaptability allows individuals to learn new things, acquire new skills and adjust to changes in their environment.
2. Overcoming Negative Thought Patterns:
Retraining the brain can help individuals overcome negative thought patterns and replace them with more positive and constructive ones. This is particularly beneficial for those dealing with conditions like anxiety, depression, or other mood disorders.
3. Improved Emotional Regulation:
Neuroplasticity interventions can enhance the brain's ability to regulate emotions. Clients may learn to manage stress, handle emotional triggers more effectively, and cultivate a more balanced emotional state.
4. Enhanced Cognitive Function:
Engaging in activities that promote neuroplasticity, such as cognitive exercises and mental challenges can enhance cognitive function. This includes improvements in memory, attention, problem-solving, and other cognitive abilities.
5. Recovery from Brain Injuries:
Neuroplasticity is crucial in rehabilitation after brain injuries. Retraining the brain can help restore lost functions or adapt to changes resulting from injury, promoting recovery and functional independence.
6. Increased Resilience:
Clients who actively work on retraining their thought patterns and brain pathways may develop increased resilience. This resilience allows them to bounce back from challenges more effectively and cope with stressors in a
healthier manner.
7. Behavioral Changes:
Retraining the brain involves altering behavioral patterns. Clients can develop new habits and responses to stimuli, leading to positive changes in their behavior and overall lifestyle.
8. Reduced Symptoms of Mental Health Conditions:
For individuals dealing with conditions like anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), neuroplasticity-based interventions may help alleviate symptoms and improve overall mental health.
9. Enhanced Learning and Skill Acquisition:
Neuroplasticity plays a crucial role in the acquisition of new skills. Clients engaging in activities that challenge and stimulate the brain can experience improved learning capabilities and skill development.
10. Pain Management:
Neuroplasticity can be harnessed for pain management. Clients may learn techniques to rewire the brain's perception of pain, potentially reducing the intensity and impact of chronic pain.
11. Long-Term Well-Being:
The ongoing process of retraining the brain contributes to long-term well-being. Clients may experience sustained improvements in mood, cognition, and overall mental health, leading to a better quality of life. It's important to note that the effectiveness of these benefits can vary among individuals, and the success of retraining efforts often depends on factors such as consistency and individual commitment.
Additionally, specific techniques and interventions tailored to the client's needs are essential for maximizing the positive outcomes of brain retraining efforts. Wendy will work with each client as an individual to apply the process as needed.
Key Benefits
Below are some of the health conditions that bring people to the training sessions:
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Anxiety
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Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
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Chronic Pain
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Fibromyalgia
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Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
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Sensitivities/ Intolerances
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Depression/ PTSD
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Irritable bowel syndrome/ digestive problems
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Insomnia
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Stress/ adrenal fatigue/ burn out
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Migraines
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Suppressed emotions/ over-thinking/ over-whelm
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Perfectionism/ OCD
Neural retraining
Neural retraining is about retraining the brain, mind, and body to work together again, this opens the training up to a wide range of health issues.
It looks to address why the system is on high alert and perhaps just responding inappropriately and how we can retrain the brain and the body to respond differently.
Stress is an interesting interplay between the world, your emotions, thoughts, neurological patterns and changes in your physical symptoms.
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Stress is something that medicine is beginning to understand better. The Neural retraining program teaches you to regain power by teaching you how you can influence your own neurology in a positive way and become an active participant in your change.
We can give patients medications for anxiety, pain, depression etc. but if they are still running the same thought processes then it is can be a vicious cycle.
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How does it work?
Using concepts of neuroplasticity, neuro-linguistic programming, life coaching and core principles of physiology (endocrine systems and neurotransmitters). It helps you change the way your nervous system works, switching on pathways which promote health and switching off ones that aren’t so useful for you.
Neural retraining applies the sound scientific principles and teaches you how to influence very important processes in your body.
Neuroplasticity​
Refers to the brain’s ability to change – to adapt and modify through activity or experience, which also includes mental activity and thoughts. Through repetition, the brain lays down neural connections becoming more efficient. Eventually whatever is repeated becomes so efficient that it will run unconsciously without our awareness. The great news is that the brain always retains the capacity to change. If you are stuck there are always options.
The implications that the brain changes are clear when you think that the brain interacts with every cell and process in the human body. Neuroplasticity opens up new treatment options. This new understanding is a game changer for many chronic illnesses and highlights the importance of a retraining approach to well-being.
With repetition, the brain rewires for efficiency and automation. We become better and faster, however, repetition can also create a rigid state. We can become stuck, stuck in our thinking, our behaviours and we now know we can become stuck in our physiological responses and functioning.
The Sympathetic response​
The sympathetic nervous system or the 'flight or fight' response (Selye, 1936, Parker, 2012) – it is our body’s natural reaction to any threat and provides amazing bursts of strength and speed, changing our body’s hormones and fuel usage and so on – is ideal if escaping a tiger and for very short periods of time. Unfortunately, the threats we find ourselves in today tend to last for longer periods of time. Illness, chronic infections, relationships, work, exams, mortgages can keep on triggering this response. Research shows that long-term activation of these changes as a result of the 'fight or flight' response is detrimental to our health, creating havoc with our sleep, healing and immune system, digestion, clear thinking and general mood – this is called Allostatic Load and has been shown to be linked to chronic illness, including heart disease, abdominal obesity, hypertension, diabetes, (Mattei, Demissie, Falcon, Ordovas & Tucker, 2010) migraines and pain (Borsook D, Maleki N, Becerra L & McEwen B, 2012) asthma (Bahreinian S et al. 2013) and CFS (Maloney EM, Boneva R, Nater UM & Reeves WC, 2009).
Reducing allostatic load is considered vital for improving chronic health conditions (Logan & Barksdale, 2008), neural retraining does this by teaching you how to spot when the sympathetic response is happening and teaches you how you can calm the response down, allowing the body to re-balance itself.
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI)
The interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems.
An understanding of the interplay between these things can highlight how people can become stuck in their health and lives.
Over the three sessions clients are taught skills that must be put into practice. It is this commitment to on-going work that is essential in the retraining aspect of the neural retraining program. The techniques can be used in many ways, to calm your nervous system down, to increase energy, to increase confidence and motivation. I teach the clients diaphragmatic breathing techniques to put into practice when needed and also address supressed emotions if needed which can manifest as physical symptoms in some cases. I adjust the training accordingly depending on what has been happening for each individual client.
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Mind or body (the missing link)
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In the past, we have tended to see conditions as either physical or psychological. There is either something ‘broken’ or it’s ‘in your head’.
We now know that this way of seeing things is biologically inaccurate and has limited treatment options for many conditions.
Through a continual stream of research, we now appreciate the role that the brain plays in many aspects of physical health.
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