Chronic Illness

Ep 38 The energy chiro, on nervous system healing with Dr Kathryn Theodosis

Dr Kathryn Theodosis joins me for this fantastic podcast where we are talking about our amazing bodies, in particular our nervous systems. Kathryn is a chiropractor who works with clients to allow their nervous system and energy system to move out of a state of stress and fear and into one of greater safety and connection. This shift allows a greater sense of safety to be held by the nervous system and the energy system, giving space for us to connect with parts of us we have not felt safe to prior

Kathryn started off as a traditional chiropractor and was introduced to network spinal analysis a gentle mode of adjustment using contact points on the spine. This transformed her own healing experience and she then completed further professional training in network spinal analysis, a modality of chiropractic care created by Donald Epstein. This then lead her to two years of professional training in Integral Energetics with Dr John Hare and Dr Fred Swan, who have created this modality that works with the body’s energy system.

In the podcast we talked about:

  • Different nervous system responses and how they show up in our bodies,

  • How our life experiences and our life story are held in our muscles and organs and we can often see this in a person’s posture and stance,

  • How network spinal allows the body to unravel, reorganise and integrate its life experiences in a gentle way allowing it to continually adapt and become more flexible,

  • That our brain loves novelty and new experiences and this helps our brain stay young and have capacity to create new neural pathways as we age, this means we can keep on learning and this is supportive of good mental health outcomes as we age,

  • How repressed emotions and old trauma and stress are held in the body and how that can sometimes manifest as pain,

  • The heart and its energetic field are another area where we pick up on the emotions and energy of the environment around you. Often it is our heart reaction picking up on the emotions of others that reacts before our conscious brain,

  • Different body holding patterns such as rigidity of the spine and what the somatic story behind that is,

  • What practices suit what nervous systems. We talked about meditation and it not being for everyone and how in fact it can for some people, reinforce a trauma pathway of avoiding their body,

  • Why creativity is so important for our emotional well-being,

  • The current trend in cold water exposure and heat through saunas and why they don’t suit everyone,

  • Women’s bodies and listening to our cyclical natures, taking queues from our body and not punishing ourselves for not able to be ‘on’ all the time.

You can find Kathryn on her website www.theenergychiro.com or on instagram @drkathryn.theenergychiro

Ep31 Living with Chronic Illness with Elizabeth Ann

Today I talk to my friend Elizabeth Ann about Living with Chronic Illness. Elizabeth is a Music Therapist who herself has living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for many years now. We thought it was time to have a discussion about Chronic Illness which is so prevalent in our society now days and so poorly misunderstood.

Elizabeth’s journey of Chronic Illness lead her to change her career and she went back and retrained to become a music therapist. Reinvigorating her long love affair with music and being a musician, which is a natural talent that she is incredibly gifted with, and supporting others on their health journey through the therapeutic modality of music therapy.

In this episode we talk about:

  • What music therapy is and how it can support you in your health journey,

  • What Chronic Fatigue is and the systems in the body it affects,

  • How living with Chronic Illness impacts on the relationships in our lives and the power dynamics that exist within them,

  • How music, dance and singing are a tool that connects us with our past stories and history,

  • How becoming chronically ill can support us to get really good at expressing our boundaries,

  • How our current cultural paradigm makes it hard to heal and function because we need so much more downtime,

  • How illness can become our identity if we are not careful,

  • The notion of what wellness actually is and having the identity of being unwell can be really disempowering for some people,

  • How to clean out your cupboards to detox your life. If you want to reference the Dirty Dozen food list we talk about click on the link.

Please contact me if you would like to get in contact with Elizabeth regarding Music Therapy and I can forward on your enquiry to her.