week in review 6-7-26
round up of this week in body-led healing
Happy Monday fellow human,
It’s been a few weeks since a wrap-up. Let’s check out the top three shared pieces of media in that time, excerpts from the newly launched program 2 in the Somatic Academy: ‘What if Love Was Your Highest Expression? Why Separation Is the Root of Our Suffering and How the Body Can Save Us:
The third most-shared video covered an interesting study in which only three metrics could predict whether a bodily vessel in a sample had ADHD or not. What were they? Skin conductance, heart rate variability and breathing rates. Funnily enough, we could almost say one, because breathing rates feed into skin conductance and HRV. ADHD is not a healthy variation, ADHD is not a form of diversity, ADHD is not a problem for everyone else but ourselves to solve (inclusion culture). ADHD is disorganisation that can be brought about from pesticide exposure, prenatal stress, and parental lifetime unresolved trauma. Which again, we could just say one, take….the….body…to…safety.
The second most-shared video featured a longitudinal study from Sweden, in which the strongest predictor of a future autism diagnosis was infant omega-3 levels. Where does a child get their omega-3 levels from? Their mother. The oven to the bun. Why are mum’s omega-3 levels lower? Depends. It could be due to diet, but it also could be due to unresolved trauma, where the chart of omega-3 in a body with PTSD looks like the chart of an infant’s omega-3 levels that increase the probability of autism. How is this carried out if this is all rather new information to us? One pathway is neuroinflammation and its role in impairing neural pruning (which, while very important in early life, continues throughout our entire life). Again, this time for the other side of the continuum: Autism is not diversity; it is a deficit.
The most-shared video involved a study with quite surprising results. Researchers wanted to see if Lactobacillus supplementation might help reduce the incidence of eczema, but when they conducted their follow-up, they appeared to have solved ADHD/ASD (at least for this sample) instead. Not one of the kids who received Lactobacillus gained a diagnosis. Where is Lactobacillus found? Raw milk. What was consumed by your great-grandparents to the first person who tested out the produce of another species? Raw milk. In Australia, it’s illegal. In Germany, it’s not, and I had a glass this morning. Has it been tested as a rescue in the research environment? Yes. Seeing up to a 1/5 drop in autism symptoms in a matter of weeks. Do we have to consume raw milk (if it is legal in our country)? No. Do we have to recognise that not doing so is a deduction from the benefit column of our gut microbiome stability? Yes. This is a mature, allostatic load approach to our well-being. My great-grandparents worked outside, and did not have a vitamin-D deficit. My great-grandparents ate organic food and did not have intestinal permeability from inorganic food. My great-grandparents drank raw milk that beefed up Lactobacillus abundance, and were, on average, far less likely to exhibit ADHD or autism like behaviour.
So let’s take a check in here. Which is what program 2 is designed to do. Program 1 mapped our nervous system as it tried to save us, with predictable responses to rising/persistent adversity. Program 2 says (A) how do we come back down, but importantly (B) what dirty water am I currently swimming in that is preventing me from doing so?
If I currently believe in neurodiversity affirming care.
If I currently expect to replace cognitive cassette tapes, regardless of the state of a bodily vessel.
If I currently dispense magic beans to a bodily vessel, self-identifying with a mental health diagnosis, that struggles to accept a cognitive cassette tape change.
I am adhering to a worldview.
A worldview that believes it is ‘fair’ to place concrete boots on children who have rampant inflammation in their bodies, positively associated with symptom severity.
A worldview that believes it is ‘rational’ to expect bodies high up on the defense cascade to be conducive to the supplementation of disempowering beliefs with empowering beliefs, and reappraisal of the catalogue of bad outcomes, when the body is, due to non-safety, designed to absolutely not do that, for our safety, during this time of non-safety.
A worldview that believes that ‘care’ looks like lifetime subscribers to magic beans that atrophy our brains, detoriate our bones and induce testicular hypofunction.
But guess what, that’s ok. Because once we realise it is a worldview based on irrational beliefs that produces behaviour with really bad consequences, we simply dislodge it. But we also commit to understanding our own propensity not to admit we are drowning without sight of a rescue helicopter, so recognising the worldview is likely to naturally arise only when an alternative is placed in front of us.
Then it all becomes a beautiful game of pursuing our highest expression: love.
What does that look like in the body? Self-other blur.
What is the prerequisite for that? Low personal distress scores.
We swap ‘rights’ of ‘inclusion’, ‘fairness’, ‘diversity’ for responsibility. Both as a patient and as a practitioner.
We radically investigate the bodily vessel, remove as many ‘loads’ as possible, and set up as many supportive structures as possible, as we turn off the survival responses and see who we might meet in a state of downregulation. What type of abundance, acceptance and even attachment do we find, once we become sovereign again over our bodily vessel?
Perhaps to help us towards that, we might find this week's Monday meditation useful, which includes a brief chat about how our bodies can begin life disorganised and, of course, practising our regular downregulation tools of breathwork and meditation (that turn off these epigenetic changes).
Or if you are really into it, then obviously you are invited to join those who have just begun the second program in the Somatic Academy: ‘What if Love Was Your Highest Expression? Why Separation Is the Root of Our Suffering and How the Body Can Save Us.
Alternatively, as always, if you prefer text (or as an optional addition to the course), the latest book is now available exclusively on Amazon: Australia, USA, UK, Germany, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Belgium, Ireland, Japan.
I’ll leave it there for now.
Here’s to your healing 💙,
Jas