My Transformative Path to Calm

My health journey is a little different to most in that mine is not a primary health condition that I have worked through, mine is one of going from being highly stressed to living life in a calm relaxed manner most of the time now.

It’s hard to believe that nearly everything used to stress me out to now predominately going with the flow and dealing with what shows up in a calm manner.  I no longer feel like I live on high alert all the time waiting for things to go wrong or worrying about the things that I cannot control.  Life is so much calmer and when I do get triggered, I return to a calm base so much quicker as I have several strategies that I use to make the shift. I also love being able to help others make this change in their life as well.

So, when did this health journey begin? It is actually hard to put an exact date on it, but I noticed that things needed to change after I completed my Masters in Human Nutrition in 2017 – I was burnt out after that experience and it didn’t take much to get me feeling all stressed out.

There have been several modalities that have helped me along the way – although the biggest was Access Consciousness – getting my bars run was an amazing experience to be able to have 32 points on the head lightly touched over a 60-minute period to calm the system down without me having to consciously try and do anything. I still get them run on a regular basis to this day.  It was around this time a looked into another modality that also helps to shift subconscious beliefs which was Psych-K  - this modality helped me to quit drinking Coke Zero cold turkey (and not miss it!) and still to this day not want to have it again – I am sure this also helps with my sleep and agitation from a dietary point of view – I had tried many times before unsuccessfully to stop drinking Coke Zero with no success. 

The other thing that Psych-K helped me recognise is how much of our lives are run by subconscious thoughts and beliefs and that until we name these they continue to create problems as these beliefs are what we shift back into when we are triggered, it is often a younger version of ourselves that are reacting in an adult body, which is also why we often don’t fully understand why we are reacting the way we are if we are not aware of our foundational beliefs that are running the show.  Most people know of the common ones, such as, not feeling worthy or not good enough. Yet it wasn’t until I did another course during the start of lockdowns in 2020 that showed me that there are fundamentally 12 core beliefs that we work from.  My main beliefs are there is a right way to do things and at times not feeling capable.  It is amazing where the belief of there is a right way to do things shows up in my life, like creating content for social media, or even cooking so it’s not until you name your core beliefs that life begins to change. You would be surprised to realise how much of your life is lived through the subconscious – some say up to 95% of the time.

This is and was true for me, delving into my strongest core beliefs and how they show up and how I behave when they are activated.  It is a learning process to recognise when they are active and shifting out of previous behaviour patterns into new ones that help move me towards my desired outcomes.

After finishing my Masters degree, a colleague (who I did the Masters with) who is a psychologist with an interest in chronic pain and I would regularly catch up for mentoring sessions to help my myotherapy clients. I personally don’t experience chronic pain, however obviously a lot of my clients do.  It was during these catch-up sessions that I learnt about how our bodies perceive pain and in essence it is about safety. 

Does the body feel safe to move? If not, why not? And what can happen when it doesn’t feel safe? Then how this can create feedback mechanisms that continue to generate pain.  It was here that I learned about the central nervous system sensitisation.  This then led to a keen interest in the stress response and our perceptions about feeling safe.  So I began a deep dive into how stress affects the body, behaviours that create stress and so on. 

These mentoring sessions changed the way that I practice as a myotherapist and also changed how I view mine and others stress.  I am softer in my approach to treatment which has seen beneficial results for my clients.  I have also softened towards myself as well and others; I am no longer hard on myself when I am triggered- I will work through my process to determine the source of the trigger and shift my reaction and response which often requires working on calming the central nervous system out of its fight and flight response.  This process shifts me out of anger, frustration, and annoyance into peace, calm and serenity.

I now come to 2020 and I would say where my greatest challenges and learnings have come from.  I started out 2020 with some great desires for my business and the direction that I wanted to head in.  Some of which are still relevant and in which I am currently working towards just not how I thought I would at the start of 2020.

In February of 2020 I did a business online course called Align and Attract which was designed to get me moving in the direction of my goals, through modules such as aligning to your ideal client, client numbers etc.  It was during the course that I came up against a lot of inheld beliefs about women and business.  This proved to be insightful for how I wanted to move my business forward and possibly why it had never been an easy task for me to take my business seriously.  So, a lot of learning and unlearning to be had.

Then the lockdowns hit and more challenges to come as my profession was deemed ‘non-essential’ – this hit me harder than I thought possible – it also showed up how much I needed outside validation to prove my worth. This has taken a lot of work over the last couple of years to come to a place where I value who I am and what I offer, regardless of what anyone else says, including what a government or health officials etc have to say about the value of my profession.

It was also during this time that I learnt what I stand for, in terms of what I value about what I offer to my clients.  I see myself as successful that my clients managed without me, it means that I gave them the skills to self-manage their pain issues, which I am proud of.

I also learnt that my clients will come back – I had nothing to worry about there and am no longer stressed by where my next client is coming from – it has been quite freeing actually to have gone through this experience in relation to how I view my work.

It was during the first lockdown in March that I did another online course called Create Your Destiny (or CYD for short) that was all about living an intuitive lead life.  There were many processes learnt through this course that opened my eyes even further to just how ingrained my limiting beliefs are and in truth you cannot rid yourself of the limiting beliefs, but you can see when you are being run by them.  This course has given me great insights into how I function when I am under stress and resort to previous behavioural patterns that are driven by a diverse number of limiting beliefs that I had tended to favour.

Then the first long lockdown of 2020 from August until October hit when again I couldn’t work at all – as my current work at the time was hands on, in person, and there was not the option of an online offering at the time. I will be honest, I really struggled with my mental health towards the end of this extended lockdown.  I lost my cat who was 17 to bone marrow cancer in the middle of this lockdown and I still have trauma from this experience – letting go of a pet is hard enough, but with all the rules and regulations at the time it was 10 times harder.  One positive out of it was that due to not being able to work I could spend the last week of his life totally devoted to him – no stress about having to put clients ahead of him or leaving him alone as I was home all the time. From diagnosis to death was only 7 days and 14 days from him showing signs of being unwell, so very rapid decline.  I am writing this with tears in my eyes – it still triggers a very strong response in me which I do not cover up – this experience broke open my heart like you cannot imagine – it bedded in my desire for a kinder world with more compassion not only for others but also for ourselves.  We are far too hard on ourselves, and I see how this hurts us in so many ways.

I will say that I survived the lockdown and came out a different person. I remember saying that when we hit future lockdowns I vowed to do them differently and that is exactly what I did. During that time, I also completed another 2 courses – these have been the driving force of everything that I currently do and am working towards in my business.  The first course was one for creating my own healing modality – this has gone through a few iterations since the first round of piloting to what it is today – but it was created during this time with the essence of soothing the stress response which has been further developed to include the central nervous system.  The second was an experimental course where I piloted the healing modality to open and receptive empath entrepreneurs – they helped to give feedback while I was working on its foundation and greatly participated in creating it into what it is today which is a healing modality called Cervello Calm™ meaning mind calm. It was during both of these experiences that I learnt to see what I was doing like a science experiment – testing who it works for, what it works on, what changes can people expect – thankful for studying my Masters to make me look at it as objectively as possible so that I could make it the best version of itself – that’s not to say that it won’t continue to change as it will with more experience and further refining. 

Another major change for me occurred in mid-May, my father passed away suddenly after only being ill for a little over a week.  This was another cracking open of my heart which still lives with me today and forever more. There were a few benefits at this time – we were fortunate that we were not under any restrictions at the time as he was in hospital regionally in Victoria – we were able to see him in ICU and say our goodbyes – we were also able to have a funeral with more than 10 people present which I will always be forever grateful for.

It is therefore not surprising that when the lockdown of May 2021 occurred that another major change was headed my way.  I was having a heated discussion (some may even say an argument) with my husband about what a terrible profession Remedial massage/Myotherapy is as it is not recognised for what it truly is, as it is not recognised the same as physiotherapy, osteopathy or chiropractic when it comes to helping people with acute and chronic pain.  It was during this discussion that I suggested a career change to counselling as one of the aspects that I love most about my work is talking with my clients about what makes them tick – also I think after doing the mentoring with my Masters colleague about what impact the mind has on pain it become a more integral component of my work to see what else was contributing to my clients experience of pain.

My husband was all keen and thought that it was a good choice – so I signed up for a Holistic Counselling diploma which aligned with my values and desires.  It was self-paced and online which was perfect for me in those uncertain times.  As it turned out, I managed to finish it in a little under 6 months thanks to the extended lockdown of 2021 from August to October.  It gave me something to focus on other than the fact that I could not work yet again.  This time I had something to work towards – this also opened the door to being able to have something that I could do online but even more importantly it means that I can help even more people, as I am no longer limited to my local area.  I loved completing this course once I got over worrying about submitting assessment tasks and getting things wrong.  I easily moved through the course and obviously it was perfect timing to provide me with skills to help myself through yet another Metro Melbourne lockdown.

There is a lot that I have learnt from my life experience so far and recognise the journey is far from over and I will continue to delve into what makes me tick and work through my issues as they arise to continue to live a life I dream of.