Mind, meet Body. Body, meet Mind. Everything I learned about restoring mind-body connection - a complete guide with my resources included
I’m going to share something more personal with this article. If any of this resonates with you, please email or DM me; I’d love to know! This is a 15-minute read. So, grab a warm drink, buckle up and come along with me.
In early 2021 I embarked on a journey to learn (a lot) more about myself. After a year of COVID restrictions and working on a difficult project from home, my anxiety grew over me; I felt uneasy and unhappy. I was exhausted every day, lacking motivation and nurturing intense fury because those two things didn’t let me live an assertive life. When my skin started to break out with eczema and my stomach bloated almost every night, I knew something was wrong.
I was determined to discover and connect the dots between how my physical body reacts to stress. How are my thoughts, emotions and body related? Can my thoughts and feelings affect my health? But how? And…whyyyy? (insert loudly crying face emoji here) And most importantly: How do I make it stop? (You can’t.)
I am a person that likes to be safe rather than sorry when it comes to illness. I don’t procrastinate on a doctor's visit. I’m a pedantic patient, making me either loved or disliked by a health care practitioner.
A few months into my search, doing blood work, scans and visits, I had nothing tangible that could explain why I felt at 35% all the time.
Visit after visit, a pattern started to show. When they asked me about stress and my working conditions to screen my potential exposure to stress, I would say that I work from the comfort of my home and that we split household management tasks with my husband.
Everything looked good on paper. My doctors wrote it down, and we settled that I must live everyday life with a few stressors. This shouldn’t be the cause of my problems.
When it came to uncovering the root cause of my dis-ease and physical symptoms, I was confused and felt helpless. Something told me I needed to go deeper and unpack things because I didn’t have anything else to work with.
I needed to understand how stress release and nervous system regulation work.
Stress, it turns out, is a necessary part of life and is not objectively scaleable at all. What you acknowledge to be stress and how you respond to it is highly individual and pre-conditioned. My life might look pretty on paper, but I stress a LOT. And this is something a healthcare professional couldn’t tap into without my help via thorough knowledge of myself.
In the last one-and-a-half years, I've learned that it’s up to our devices (our body + our thoughts) to release the tension that comes with stress and close the stress cycle.
When we don’t work the stress off, it stays in the body and either circulates like a travelling circus or picks a place and starts to accumulate until we can’t ignore its existence.
I’ve always known myself to be conscious and reflective but let me tell you, I was letting myself down big time.
Also, let’s talk a bit about nervous system regulation. When I first met this expression, I thought it only applied to people with mental illnesses, people who live with an ongoing challenge of regulating the state of their nervous system. Again, I was wrong. Each and every one of us has a nervous system (obviously!); therefore, each one of us regulates it day in and day out, whether consciously or unconsciously.
When our nervous system is dysregulated, our thoughts become survival based.
I had a lot of anxious thoughts about how I couldn’t keep my boundaries with friends, family and colleagues. How I ended up doing things way out of my comfort zone, and why I was overreacting or misinterpreting situations I otherwise would deal with easily.
When I told my husband how I felt back then, for the majority of 2021 and earlier, I told him I was in a constant state of fear and threat. While my brain knew it was exaggerated, I couldn't soothe myself and find a calm, reassuring state.
Looking back through the glasses I’m wearing today, my body and mind were confused about danger and vulnerability versus stability and trust felt like, and I couldn’t understand the difference between those states.
Excuse moi, I'm doing what?!
You might know the famous saying by Friedrich Nietzsche - because it in some shape or form already blew up your Instagram feed - where he said, “you yourself will always be the worst enemy you can encounter; you yourself lie in wait for yourself in caves and forests”. In my personal experience, I am not only capable of being my own worst enemy, but I can move mountains when I am in unconscious denial of something I’m afraid of.
At my first couple of doctor's appointments, I was in denial of stress and its influence on my nervous system. I thought I didn't feel it… because I couldn't feel it. I couldn't pinpoint it; I couldn't tell where what I felt in my belly or on my skin came from. I was completely oblivious and, again, felt helpless.
Things started to shift when I clarified how my body and mind work together. That I needed to learn to identify my thought patterns and triggers around stressful situations. I realised I needed to know to self-soothe.
There is another snap of wisdom that I've encountered not once but twice, making me stop in my tracks.
Throughout my journey, I have been working with several physical therapists. For a long time, I was convinced that PT is for people who have encountered severe physical trauma, PTSD or have remains of all kinds of injuries. But then, a friend suggested I should try manual therapy and see if that informs my perception of the problem.
Two different practitioners asked me the very same question at some point during therapy: What are you resisting?
Excuse moi, I'm doing what?!
And just like that, I started to understand. Things got in motion.
The biggest project I’ve taken up in life so far.
When it came to unpacking essential insights about myself and taking action, the path wasn’t clear and in no way linear. That is why this is by far the most intensive and elaborate project I’ve ever done in my life.
It surprises me how expansive I feel to talk about this journey now. Everything about taking care of your health as a 30-something female is a conscious effort, requiring research, information-seeking, questions, and intent.
When I started, I felt alone, disconnected and sometimes in despair. Now I feel spacious and knowledgeable and want to gather my little community of friends so we can cheer each other on, commiserate and ultimately learn together as our journeys unfold.
It all started by inviting myself to reconnect and repair what was out of whack.
“I see (...) that our deepest hopes, fears, needs, and longings are often expressed through our illnesses, and sometimes they are expressed through our illnesses because every other avenue of expression is blocked. It’s worth asking yourself: What is this illness holding for me? Your illness might have become a repository for some aspect of who you are – or who you believe yourself to be – so it seems that letting go of that illness represents a kind of loss of self.”
Have you ever had a time of self-discovery that set you free?
Well, I’m about to share a collection of resources that helped me through that phase of self-discovery.
I progressed through doctoral appointments; I noticed that most practitioners I met couldn’t connect the dots between my physical symptoms and any scans or blood work they’d done.
I know many people have persistent physical complaints that don't appear to be symptoms of a medical condition. They are "medically unexplained symptoms" when they last for more than a few weeks, but doctors can't find a problem with the body that may be the cause.
I firmly believed it was not a good enough verdict for me. So I went on.
What is my story? What is the story I’ve told myself about who I am? Two landmark questions helped me get out of the rut.
I opened myself up to new experiences so I didn’t miss what my subconscious mind was trying to tell me. I paid attention. I learned to listen and then took the messages to heart. At a basic level, I became open to reassessing my fundamental beliefs about who I am and how I operate in life.
I am immensely grateful to my endocrinologist, Viktoria, who encouraged me to dig deeper and consider seemingly unrelated aspects of my lifestyle. At every appointment, we’ve had (and are having to this day), her approach showed me the overarching trends around my health. She kept her area of expertise in the centre but offered other directions.
After months of hard work, I could get a grip on my physical symptoms. I understood how my inner world, intuition and emotions are hooked with my body - and vice versa.
My symptoms have eased. I feel calmer, soothed. I no longer have sudden and mysterious flare-ups where I feel I have no control over what happens. I feel like I’m functioning again.
To move up from 35% to 80%+ on my life barometer (that’s where I am now!), self-compassion is the most significant skill I had to learn. I have permitted myself to discover who I am when I work with my physical and emotional body, not against them.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this, so you’ll have to be brave and walk your path.
I hope you find the guidance and resources in this article helpful.
My learning style is bound to reading and taking notes before taking action.
I’ve always believed in being well-prepared. I hate shallow advice and rash generalisation of people's problems without knowing or using any contextual information. I developed a nearly 60-question quiz for my potential clients so I can get a clear image of their business and pain points. I’m not here for oversimplified BS.
Reading is how I prefer to learn. I choose books or research papers on a topic, read them like workbooks (underlines, flags and all!) and then turn my notes into practice.
I’ll walk you through resources - books, different therapies, concepts and apps - that helped me piece together the puzzle of the mind-body connection and ultimately change my life.
I didn’t list anything I haven’t tried, though. So note that you might know other resources that lead to the same outcome. In that case: I’m happy if you find what works for you!
All the books I’ve worked through demonstrate a holistic concept of health and well-being. Backed up with science and a long list of references, each book is the brainchild of a contemporary author and, in most cases, a doctor.
This is your invitation to peek into a journey that’s probably one of the most important ones in this season of my life.
I hope to help you master this path more confidently (than I did).
Let’s dive in!
My menu of resources to support you in discovering and nurturing a mind-body connection
I understand that I have had the great privilege through this process. I could dedicate time and financial resources to my health and wellness project. I viewed this journey as a period where I could build a foundation for a better future: a better life, healthier self and relationships. An investment, if I look at it that way.
I thematised my journey into four stages. By clicking the links, you can jump right to the topics:
🧠 Unlocking your subconscious
🕺 Unlocking your body
🤝 Mind, meet Body. Body, meet Mind.
🏄 Train your body and mind to work together
You'll find a list of resources and my short note for each.
Unlocking your subconscious
Understand why you think what you think and why you (re)act as you do - traditional and new models of (psycho)therapy
Tools
Seek help from a therapist or psychologist to get a general idea of how your mind works. If peer-to-peer work is not your jam, look for groups or individual (self-paced) experiences, like the book below.
Imagination, visualisation and hypnotherapy were both helpful and fun for me. By far the most effective way to switch my thought patterns.
Inner child work is more important than I have ever thought.
Exploring lineage and releasing transgenerational trauma is a must before you can move on.
Reading: How to do the work by Dr Nicole LePera
The most extensive help I have ever gotten from a book. Truly.
If I weren’t practising healthy boundaries, I’d buy them for all my friends and family. Now I recommend it to every human being I have a conversation with.
How to do the work, a book by Dr Nicole LePera
Unlocking your body
Uncover what you are resisting
Tools
Craniosacral Therapy. I’d write it in all caps if that weren’t rude. Highly recommend it. Helps shift the body out of stress mode into a calmer, more relaxed state.
Autogenic training worked fantastic for me, even at a basic level. Helped to map problem areas in my body. Curiosity and determination are a must to make it work.
Women hold a lot of tension in their pelvic floor. Consulting a pelvic floor specialist was an insightful and essential step for me.
Have patience and self-compassion. This is the slowest, most time-consuming part of the journey. Keep with it.
Reading: Cured by Jeffrey Rediger MD
This book was the cherry on top, the Ring above all for me. The most helpful book you can get about medicine and health today. A Harvard professor studied spontaneous healing for a decade and shares his insights.
CURED, a book by Jeffrey Rediger, MD
Mind, meet Body. Body, meet Mind
Little Miss tells everyone about the Vagus Nerve
Tools
Nerva IBS gut-directed hypnotherapy. If you have symptoms around digestion or your stomach and want to try one thing from this article, this should be it. They have a targeted, 6-week program through an app, and you can have a free taster for 7 days.
Explore the topic of gut health and microbiome health. It’s pretty accessible now, but there’s a lot of confusion around it. I chose the book below and stand by it as a resource.
The Holistic Psychologist Instagram account posts valuable tips and tricks around how to work with your vagus nerve and regulate your nervous system.
Reading: Fiber fueled by Will Bulsiewicz MD MSCI
This book is eye-opening, even if you already know that the future of healthy eating is plant-based. Also, Dr B. is just so fantastic; a practitioner who can explain complicated terms in an easy-to-understand, entertaining way. Some lovely recipes are included in the book, so I encourage you to try them.
Fiber Fueled, a book by Will Bulsiewicz, MD, MSCI
Mind & body works together
Unlocking your body, healing your mind
Tools
Find a meditation genre or a performer that works for you. My favourites are the Heavily Meditated app, the CHANI app, and Tomek Wyczesany on Insight Timer. But I’m constantly on a hunt.
Breathwork was a massive discovery for me. I practice Breath with James through the feel better by deliciously ella app. He’s magic.
Listen to the Feminist Survival podcast by Emily and Amelia Nagoski (authors of the book below) to learn more about how to complete the stress response.
Moving your body in unfamiliar ways: stretches, yoga, flow dance or any unchoreographed movement to work out thoughts and emotions tucked away.
Try other ways of somatic release like singing or driving - both working charms for me.
Reading: Burnout by Emily Nagoski PhD and Amelia Nagoski DMA
It’s easy to get sucked into this book, just as it was in Come as you are (written by Emily alone). I think the phrase 'being burnt out' is too loosely handled in everyday conversations. Finally, there's a book that helps navigate what it means (and doesn't), tailored for modern women.
Burnout, a book by Emily Nagoski, PhD and Amelia Nagoski, DMA
A ‘work’ that will never end
The last two-ish years taught me to pay close attention to my body and tune in to the critical signals. Excavate any resistance, or hidden stress, bring them to the surface and turn them into pro-action.
I know I may be a creature of comfort most of the time. Still, the physical discomfort I experienced was an influential teacher that nudged me down the path of self-discovery and self-knowledge.
Taking note of the growth edges I was up against and how I could work through the irritation and hardship of new experiences instead of shying away from them.
The four themes presented in this article - unlocking the subconscious and the body, establishing and cultivating a mind + body connection - are lessons for a lifetime. The most impactful project I’ve ever managed.
Although, as I write this article - when I am in a period of ease and lightness - I know that it is a journey that will never end. Dis-ease will present itself again, pointing to edges that need some TLC, some tender loving care, and there’ll be new things to discover about how body and mind work.
A (friendly) disclaimer: The collection of resources shared in this article is designed to accompany the exploration of your health and wellness. I am not affiliated with the brands or products mentioned above. This article is not intended to substitute professional medical advice and should not be relied on as health or personal advice. Always seek the guidance of your doctor or other qualified health professional with any questions regarding your health or a medical condition.