Brain retraining is a key mind-body technique to help in healing from chronic conditions, whether they’re emotional illnesses or physical illnesses. It takes advantage of the power of neuroplasticity – the ability for our brain to change throughout our entire lifespan.

That’s why I’m excited to introduce you to Ashok Gupta, founder of the Gupta Program and expert in brain retraining.

He’s been researching and teaching about neuroplasticity and brain retraining for decades. His work is helping people with both chronic emotional and physical conditions: Anxiety, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long COVID – conditions that people are suffering with for a lot of their life and looking for answers and solutions.

Ashok has identified and developed a solution that he offers through an app that you can use on your phone. He is helping people from around the world to recover from trauma, and reverse health issues that were thought to be irreversible, using mind-body techniques he can guide you to use online. 

Ashok’s Personal Journey

Like many of us who’ve come into this healing profession, we’re doing this because we’ve been through our own challenges and our own healing journeys and wanting to share that with others. 

Ashok’s journey started in the mid-90s. He was studying as an undergrad at Cambridge and had some kind of virus. The virus seemed to go away, but he felt worse and worse. It seemed to go downhill with his health to the point at which he was exhausted. He couldn’t even walk to the bathroom, he couldn’t read the words on the page, everything just seemed to be shutting down.

He went from doctor to doctor, and remember, in the mid-90s, these conditions weren’t really recognized. It was all seen as, “Oh, that’s just depression, it’s yuppie flu, it’s something that’s in your head.” The doctors would tell him, “We don’t know what you have, we don’t really know what to call it, you might have this for the rest of your life, we have no treatment, goodbye.” 

They called it chronic fatigue syndrome, but that’s a label, and they really didn’t know what was happening or why.

That started Ashok’s lifelong quest to try and understand health conditions. He met hundreds of others and made a contract with the universe: 

He said, “If I can just get myself even 50% well, I will dedicate the rest of my life to helping others.” 

The Development of the Gupta Program

Then Ashok managed to, in an ad hoc way, train his brain. He discovered a lot of brain neurology, understood what was going on for him, retrained his brain, and got 100% well. 

This was in the mid-90s. 

Then he set up a clinic to treat others. Since then, he’s published randomized controlled trials, clinical audits, and now has an app. It’s been a real journey over the last 30 years or so, he shares.

Understanding the Science Behind Chronic Conditions

Ashok explains that to answer the question of how healing the nervous system can have such an impact on chronic conditions, we need to start with the biggest question of all in the universe: Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? 

From a science perspective, we’re here because over millions of years of evolution, our nervous system and our immune system – those are our two main systems – have evolved from plant life to single-cell organisms to invertebrates, vertebrates, mammals, and human beings.

We contain that DNA, and amazingly, we contain 40% of the same DNA as a banana. It’s incredible, isn’t it? What it shows is that our systems are designed to adapt to our environment, survive, procreate, and pass on our genes to the next generation. We really are like survival machines if you think about it.

That gives us the first clue to why chronic illnesses occur, whether they’re emotional illnesses or physical illnesses. The brain cares more about your survival than it does your well-being. 

Well-being is not so important; that doesn’t necessarily influence whether you pass on your genes or not. Survival, that’s really super important.

So, the way that chronic illnesses often start is when we go through some kind of illness or attack – that could be a virus, bacterial infection, mold exposure, chemical exposure, those are the main ones – our bodies and our immune systems fight back. They get triggered, they fight off that particular infection, and the whole system goes back to balance.

But now imagine that the system is weak, weaker than normal because of ongoing stress or infections or whatever it may be. Then something crazy happens, which is the brain errs on the side of caution and starts over-defending.

The Fairy Tale Analogy

To bring this really to life, Ashok shares the fairy tale analogy. 

Imagine you are King or Queen of your kingdom. Your kingdom represents your body, and your body has an army, which is your nervous system, and a navy, which is your immune system. Your army and navy work together to protect this wonderful kingdom, this wonderful body.

But now imagine that there is a drought in the kingdom. Because of the drought, obviously, the army and navy are weaker. The whole kingdom is weaker as a result. And in comes an invading army over the hill. Now, this time, the army and navy fight valiantly. They try to defend the kingdom, and they manage to fight off the invading army, but it takes a lot longer than it might normally because the soldiers are weak.

Now the army and navy generals are a bit traumatized by that war, and they think, “What happens if we didn’t get rid of the invader? What happens if they’re hiding in the forest or hiding behind a mountain? We should keep ourselves on red alert just in case they’re around.”

So they come to you and they say, “We need all the resources of the kingdom now because the kingdom nearly fell because we’re weak. So give us all the clean water, the food, the metal, everything. Channel it towards us.” And they keep firing off their weapons of war, which is the inflammation, the nervous system being over-stimulated, to defend the kingdom in case the threat is still present.

But some of those arrows start falling back in the kingdom, and that’s when we get the stress-induced effects. So the oxidative stress, the autoimmune effects, the inflammatory effects, the exhaustion, the fatigue, the gut dysbiosis – all of this is occurring because our army and navy are firing off their weapons of war too much and trying to hyper-defend the kingdom.

So you can see now already we’ve got a state of lack of balance in the system and exhaustion, fatigue, stress, et cetera. But not only that, now opportunistic infections start flourishing in the kingdom because we can’t detoxify as well, we can’t fight off these infections. So now that causes secondary problems, and so the whole system is now exhausted, fatigued, with autoimmune and inflammatory effects.

This is why we see so many common symptoms amongst all these different illnesses. And of course, the generals keep coming to their weekly meeting and you naturally tell them, “Yes, keep defending, keep defending.” 

And so the whole system becomes chronic where the brain stimulates the nervous system and immune system, which circles and creates the symptoms in our body and the gut dysbiosis that then circles back to that hypervigilant brain, which then thinks we’re still in danger, triggering the symptoms in the body, and around and around we go, creating the cycle of chronic illness.

The Role of Neuroplasticity in Healing

This can be relevant for a number of different illnesses. Neuroimmune illnesses, long COVID, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and pain. So pain syndromes often occur because this whole system has gotten out of balance and we’re now in danger mode. 

Then autoimmune illnesses and sensitivity reactions, so MCAS, mold illness, all those sensitivity and environmental illnesses – we believe are all caused by this over-stimulation in the brain.

With brain retraining and neuroplasticity, when the army and navy generals come to their next meeting, you say to them, “My dear generals, you have done a wonderful job at defending the kingdom. The war is over. Please stand down now.” 

Of course, the first time you say that to the army generals, they’ll think this is a trick. “We’re in danger, look, the kingdom’s gonna fall, we have to defend.” But through neuroplasticity, which is the idea of repetition again and again and again, we create new neural pathways and networks, eventually train the brain that we are safe.

That is a tricky thing because your brain is defending against a danger that could potentially be life-threatening. So it’s that repetition that makes it work.

Brain Retraining: The Gupta Program Approach

Ashok’s program doesn’t use any invasive devices. They don’t use vagus nerve stimulators, et cetera. This is all done through the power of the brain. The reason is because we want this to be long-lasting. Because sometimes if you use an external device, you’re still reliant on that thing.

The Gupta program essentially has three parts or big R’s, and they refer to this as the wings of a dove. So how does a dove fly? They need two wings and tail feathers. 

1. The first wing is relaxing the nervous system. It’s important to regulate the nervous system because our brains are not flexible when they’re stressed.
   
   Imagine a couple come together after a hard and stressful day at work. When they come together, they’re both stressed out. Now, do you think they’re going to be flexible to understand each other’s point of view in that moment? No, they’re just going to get tighter and tighter because we’re not flexible when we’re stressed.
   
   So we need to calm our minds down before we’re ready to be flexible and neuroplastic. So their first port of call is, let’s relax the nervous system. And they use lots of different tools and techniques like somatic work, breathwork, meditation, visualization, and they find the tools that fit for each client.
   
2. The second wing of the dove is retraining the brain, and that’s the unique aspect of the Gupta program. The program includes a specialized seven-step process that incorporates self-awareness, repetition, imagination, self-coaching, and parts work. All of these things are integrated into a very slick seven-step process that models human change essentially.
   
3. The third part or tail feathers of the dove is reengaging with joy, which is essential for someone to get well and stay well. We can become aware of our stress patterns, what are the things that cause stress and trigger our stress. The program includes coaching and lots of other great tools and mindfulness to support people for the rest of their life.

Neuroplasticity and the Importance of Daily Practice

Ahsok explains that another tool that’s been a game-changer is something called daily Guptasize. The secret of neuroplasticity is repetition. It’s a bit like if you meditate – if you meditate once a week, that’s great, but it’s not going to be anything like meditating every day. That’s super important.

So in a similar way, brain retraining is more powerful when it’s done every day. They know that patients are isolated and alone, so they have daily sessions on Zoom for nervous system regulation and brain retraining, run by their coaches. That has been a game-changer. They have 200 people a day coming on that, experiencing the exercises, lots more listening to the recordings, and that gives people motivation, a sense of community.

Of course, there’s that collective aspect. If you have 200 people with that collective intention healing together in a room, meditating, the depth of that experience is far more powerful than meditating on our own. So that’s another key feature of the program, as well as weekly webinars with Ashok. So there’s a whole ecosystem of support and community for people healing.

Brain Retraining: Research and Results

The science behind all this is super important. Ashok explains they have run several medical trials. For instance, they did a clinical audit, and that showed that 90% of their patients made an improvement, and two-thirds of their patients made an 80 to 100% recovery within a year of following the program. So pretty much full recovery for two-thirds of the patients!

They have also run three randomized controlled trials (two of them have been recently). So one on fibromyalgia – that one showed that after just eight weeks, which is a relatively short amount of time, there was close to a 40% reduction in fibromyalgia in the Gupta Program group, but zero effect in the control group. And they had a halving of anxiety, a halving of depression, halving of pain, 50% increase in functional capacity, but very low scores in the control. These are all showing you that the program works on an objective level – and this was an independent study by an independent university, and that was published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine.

And then recently, they published a clinical audit. This was an independent clinical audit by an organization that sent forms to their patients, and they filled them in, and they assessed it independently. And that study showed that across 14 different conditions, there was between 50 to 100% improvement in function scores after just three months of following the program.

And that’s incredible because they started with chronic fatigue and those types of illnesses, but now they’re finding that whether it’s POTS or mold or Lyme disease, so many of these unexplained syndromes, they’re able to heal and support through the Gupta program.

Inspiring Stories of Recovery

One of Ashok’s favorite stories is a gentleman they had in New Zealand who was using their program, and he was 82. At the age of 82, you know, where is your fatigue coming from? It’s kind of difficult to know. And he had had fibromyalgia for 30 years. He’d had mold, he’d had POTS, he’d had a whole bunch of different conditions that were very debilitating. And he used their program, and after three months, he was up to about 85% recovery.

And Ashok said to him, “What will you do with your life now?” And he said, “I’m gonna travel the world. I’m going to do all the things I haven’t done in the last 30 years. I’m going to make the most of the rest of my life.” And Ashok thought, what an inspiring story. If someone at 82 can retrain their brain, get their life back, and enjoy life, then it’s possible for the vast majority of us to also be able to do this and get our lives back.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Thank you so much Ashok for the Gupta Program and for coming to tell us all about it today. 

If you would like to learn more about the Gupta Program and how it can help you check out Ashok’s website. You can also find him on Instagram @guptaprogram and Facebook @The Gupta Program.

This is also something that people can access, I would say, in a cost-effective way because I think sometimes people worry, “Is this going to be something that’s going to be too expensive for me to be able to access?” You can access it from anywhere in the world and you can go at your own pace. These things that might stop us don’t have to stop us from accessing a resource like this one.

And also, something that they have as a feature is they offer a one-year money-back guarantee on their treatment. So it’s a one-year subscription with all the support we’re talking about – daily sessions, weekly sessions – plus, after six months, if you notice no improvement, you can return the program, no questions asked and get your money back!

Ashok wants to give inspiration to everyone that no matter what your support group has said or what a physician has said or whatever it may be, if they’ve said, “Look, you can’t heal, all these are unhealable,” let that go. He believes that health is our birthright, that we all have the ability to retrain and improve our health, and that’s the hope he wants to give everybody.

Thank you so much again for coming today Ashok I’m just so glad to be able to be friends with you and connect with you and to be working together to bring this to more and more people that are suffering from chronic illnesses, pain, anxiety, stress, and as a result of that, their quality of life has been affected.

So instead of relying on traditional medicine to heal us, to come up with some magic pill, now it’s up to all of us to take responsibility for our mental, physical, and emotional health and make it a priority in our lives.

I am living proof that it is possible to heal holistically and naturally. It’s possible to heal from migraines, not to feel pain while having hypermobility, clear HPV and reverse abnormal cells, and eliminate the effects of stress, trauma, anxiety and depression. 

It’s possible to reset our stress hormones, detoxify, and help our body and mind to recover. I help patients with to do this in my practice every day – by phone and zoom, anywhere in the world. You can set up a one-on-one appointment.

To learn more about my approach to healing from all of this using my Stress Recovery Protocol which involves optimizing cortisol and adrenaline levels to heal the adrenals, as well as neurotransmitters, using nutrients, herbs and C.A.R.E.™ – my proprietary program to support clean eating, adequate sleep, stress recovery and exercise – I encourage you to read all about it in my latest book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

Thanks again for joining us. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of How Humans Heal. I’ll talk to you soon.

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