Trauma and Rewiring Chronic Pain Through Nervous System Regulation With Jane Hogan | Ep 27

Host Liz Albanis is joined by Jane Hogan, the Wellness Engineer. A neuroscience-based mind-body educator who left a 30-year engineering career. After reversing debilitating rheumatoid arthritis symptoms through natural methods. Chronic pain can turn life into a constant negotiation: what you can do, what you have to cancel, what you dread waking up to. But what if the most important question isn’t “What’s broken?” What if it’s “What is my nervous system trying to protect me from?”
Key Topics:

• Chronic pain can be a learned protective response rather than proof that the body is broken. With Jane Hogan, we connect grief, stress, older patterns, and nervous system dysregulation to practical tools that help pain soften over time. 
• How grief, chronic stress, and long-standing patterns like perfectionism and people pleasing can keep the body in high alert, amplifying pain even when scans and blood work do not give clear answers. 
• The overlap between emotional pain and physical pain pathways,
• Why diagnosis labels and scans do not always explain chronic pain
• Nervous system dysregulation as a root cause 
• Yoga beyond asana, with breath and awareness as the bridge.
• Gratitude, forgiveness and emotional release as part of healing 
• Freedom talk journalling
• EFT tapping, and eye-movement based tools 
• Breath basics for mechanics and chemistry, including longer exhales.
• Visual and heart-focused breathing for pain relief 

About The Guest: Jane Hogan, “The Wellness Engineer,” is a neuroscience-based mind-body educator, health coach, and wellness leader, helping people release chronic pain by rewiring their brain and calming their nervous system. Through her Wellness by Design podcast, bestselling book Pain-Free on Purpose: Use Your Mind to Heal Your Body and Get Your Life Back, and her transformative programs Calm by DESIGN and Living Pain-Free, Jane has guided thousands of people to retrain their nervous systems, restore vitality, and return to a state of peace and possibility. Connect With Jane: https://www.thewellnessengineer.com Youtube Instagram Facebook 

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Transcript

A Different Lens On Pain

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We do it for ourselves and for our bodies. And you know, we've got this one vehicle to get through this life, so we may as well like get it all released so that it can be the best it can be for us.

Context And Disclaimer

SPEAKER_02 0:13

What if the pain you've been trying to fix isn't actually something to fight, but something your body has learned? In today's conversation, we're exploring a perspective that challenges everything we've been taught about chronic pain, healing, and the role of the nervous system. Because what if your body isn't broken? Instead, it's protecting you. In this episode, we go beyond the physical and explore how stress, suppressed emotions, can shape our experience in ways we don't often realise. This is a conversation that invites you to rethink your relationship with your body, to soften the urge to fix, and to begin listening in a whole new way. Hi, I'm Liz Albanis, and welcome to season two of Yoga for Trauma, the Inner Fire of Yoga, where we explore how yoga can help release trauma, calm the mind, and reconnect you with your body.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

The views and opinions expressed by guests on this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host Liz Albanis. The content shared in these conversations is intended for informational and educational purposes only, and it's not suitable for listeners under the age of 18. Please use discretion and consult a qualified professional before making changes to your health or wellness routines.

Meet Jane Hogan

SPEAKER_02 1:43

My guest today is someone who has lived this first hand. Jane Hogan, the wellness engineer, is a the neuroscience-based mind-body educator, health coach, and wellness leader, helping people release chronic pain by rewiring their brain and calming their nervous system. After personally reversing debilitating rheumatoid arthritis using natural and neuroplasticity-based methods, Jane left a 30-year engineering career to apply her analytical mind to the science of healing. Today she integrates functional medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, and mind-body neuroscience to help others understand and transform the patterns that keep them stuck in pain. Through her Wellness by Design podcast, best-selling book, Pain Free on Purpose, use your mind to heal your body and get your life back, and her transformative programs, Calm by Design and Living Pain-Free, Jane has guided thousands of people to retrain their nervous systems, restore vitality, and return to a state of peace and possibility. Her compassionate science meets spirit approach bridges the gap between traditional medicine and holistic healing. Jane has been featured in the Thrive Global Elephant Journal and numerous podcasts and summits, and is the creator and host of the Becoming Pain-Free online summits, empowering thousands worldwide to step into their innate healing potential. Jane's mission is to teach the world that pain can be unlearned and that living pain-free is possible. Let's get into the episode. Welcome, Jane, to the show. So great to have you here today.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Thanks, Liz. I'm so happy to be here. I just love what you're doing and um yeah, truly my honor.

Trauma, Grief, Stress And Sudden Illness

SPEAKER_02 3:55

That's very kind of you, Jane. You've got a really amazing story with changing your career because of a setback or maybe just something that was meant to happen to help you learn more about holistic health. Are you able to just share with the audience about your story that caused your career change after a medical diagnosis?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

Yeah, I mean, it's I kind of see it as the best thing that happened to me now because I used to be an I was an engineer. My little joke is I was a structural engineer until my own structure started to fail. That was a good joke. And yeah, it wasn't so funny then. Um but I had I I was I went through life, you know, basically living my life, thought, thought everything was going great. I had a good career. I was a mother, happily married, three kids, my kids were just about grown. The last one had basically left the nest, and and then my mother suddenly died, and we were really, yeah, thank you. We were really close, and it was a shock. She hadn't been sick or anything like that, and she was just gone. And so, and she was my best friend and champion, and so that was a shock. And then I was also uh the executor for her, you know, all of her her estate, and we weren't expecting it, so house full of things. My parents had lived in the house for 50 years, my father had died a few years earlier, and so I had all of the content. So my parents were travelers and collectors and big readers. There was a lot of books, and sounds like my parents. Anyway, yeah, and I had two older siblings and a younger sibling, and so there's, you know, inevitably tensions, not it was still pretty good, but there were some tensions, and so I wasn't sleeping, I had like heart palpitations all the time. I just I was just in a real wreck, real wreck. And I had I was just sort of coming to the end about a year after my mother had died. I was coming to the final part of really like cleaning out finally the house, getting it on the market, and all of that. And I started to get pain, joint pain, and it was severe. I'd never had anything like this before. I would like my shoulder hurt, but I had to put my arm in a sling, and then the next day it was the other shoulder, and it just happened really, really quickly. And within three months, um, I had pain in a lot of joints throughout my body, my feet, my hands, my wrists, my knees, my jaw, my shoulders, not my hips though, um, but a lot of other places. And I was barely able to walk. Could hard, I couldn't make a fist, like I had no grip strength. I couldn't even like squeeze one of those hair clips, you know, to put your hair up. I uh it was just awful, and I didn't know what was going on. There was nothing really showing up in my blood work with my doctor, and I thought, okay, I got the house sold, I've taken care of all this. I knew it was probably stress, I just need a vacation and I'll be fine. But I actually got worse. And uh I remember I was taking, I was home, and my husband had gone to work, and I was lying in bed, and you kind of wake up when you've got this really, really severe pain. You wake up in the morning and you think, Oh, you know, maybe that was dream, and then you feel the pain, and it's like, oh no, it's not. And I really felt like my I wanted my life to be over. Like I just I just thought there's we'd we've been leading up to these freedom years and looking forward to retirement, and I wasn't gonna be able to do anything, and I just felt like I was a burden to everyone. Uh I was letting everyone down, and I thought, this is the way my life is gonna be. I'm ready to be done. And then in the next moment I heard like a voice in my head, but it wasn't really my voice. It just said, This isn't how your life is gonna turn out, you're going to figure it out and you're gonna teach other people. And I, from that moment on, I just had this deep, deep knowing that I would. I mean, I was still in pain, but I just had a new resolve that I was gonna figure it out. And um anyway, I think it was about a week later when I went to see my doctor, and she happened to mention that sometimes foods can trigger joint pain. And I thought this was crazy, but I was like, okay, I'm gonna figure this out, so I'm gonna try to do it, and it just started leading me down uh more of a holistic kind of approach, like I was doing anti-well, I didn't know what I was doing in the beginning. I just cut out gluten and and sugar and dairy, and that and I did have some reduction in pain, and then it I started trying other things and learning about other stuff, and it just kind of took me down the holistic approach. Um, but I was still, you know, still in a lot of pain for a long time, and I would have flares, and it wasn't until I really began to notice that it was acting, it was not just the stress of my mother dying, even though that was a big thing and dealing with everything. It also went back to childhood and traumas uh from child, like uh not major traumas, just mild stuff. But I think when all this was going on with my siblings, it kind of re triggered things. And I just realized I had I was trying to just sort of forget that and think, oh my goodness, like you're 50 years old, Jane. That's that can't still be bothering you. But deep down things were bothering me, and so led me to the nervous system and releasing forgiveness work, surrender, all of those things. So that's a that's a long, long, his long history, but there you go, you got the picture. And so eventually I did leave my engineering career. I did become pain-free. Um, and I became a functional medicine health coach and help people. Really, now it's mostly about the nervous system, helping them create calm and making it a habit throughout the day, day after day, because it's that's how our brain and our body can learn that it's safe again and begin to let go of pain.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Yeah, it's not just um once a day or like you get out your yoga mat, let breathe better on the mat. You've got to take it off the mat as well. And lifestyle. It's interesting how this all came up after all these stressful times, like Dr. Gabor Matei saying your body was starting to say no. But I also note his work, and it was either Bessel or Peter Levine saying how these little traumas, like people pleasing in childhood, like you said, you had nothing major, but those little things can show up later as things like what you had. Was it rheumatoid arthritis?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Yeah, I was eventually diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis. I mean, I just kind of think it doesn't really matter what the diagnosis is. You know, it's just like your body's not in harmony, it's sensing that it's not safe. That's all.

SPEAKER_02 11:25

It's objecting and and saying no and get getting to the root cause is important, is important as we do in a holistic approach rather than a reductionist approach of band-aiding the symptoms and saying, here's some painkillers to take for the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Yeah. Or surgery or injections, or or even, I think, even, you know, I like I I love function functional medicine, and I did go down that route, but even, you know, take these supplements, find exactly the right supplement, or cream, or red light therapy, or you know, all these other modalities, which can which can help. It's not that they won't help, but they're still really only addressing symptoms, not getting underneath at the root cause. Exactly.

Yoga Beyond Poses And Performance

SPEAKER_02 12:13

And you need to get to the root cause to have that long-term, long-term result and not rely on things like just supplements and medication. So you also became a yoga teacher at some stage. Was that before all of this happened, or was it as a result of yoga?

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Well, it was no, it was after I became a functional medicine health coach. I mean, I've been doing yoga for years, and um, it was well, it was basically during COVID that I did my training um because I had begun to learn about the power of the breath and um and the power of just really connecting the mind, body, breath together. And so that's why I did the training. And um, but I actually don't teach a lot of yoga anymore. I do I do a do still do a lot of breath work. Um I just feel like I I want to teach uh and help people feel joyful moving their body in any way, really, you know, it's which which many good deem is yoga. Yeah, yeah. And I think what we what we think of as yoga is all you know, people think yoga is do these poses and the asanas, and you know, really the origins of yoga wasn't even about that. It was so different, and that's not what people do now when they think of yoga. So I think I I sort of almost feel like yoga's precious, you know, true yoga is precious, and I didn't learn that true yoga, you know, the re that real connection with the breath and the the um you know the self-realization, using yoga as that self-realization and connecting with our our higher self. So I feel like what I learned was not quite the right thing.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

Well, that that's fair enough. I think unfortunately a lot of um trainings um are about that nowadays, or they just don't have time to cover enough in that required 200 hours to get you.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Yeah, and I think, you know, sometimes our our systems kind of because we have to have a system and they have to have a, you know, a curriculum and check the boxes and things like that, it sort of detracts from the true meaning of it. But I love it. I love the true meaning of it, and I think um it really that that connection with your mind-body spirit, that's the answer.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Yeah, yes, the mind, but because of the mind-body connection, we've got to work with the body, not just the mind, all the layers.

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah, and I often uh, you know, I I teach a lot on nervous system now, and I use that language a lot more about nervous system and brain, and you know, and connecting with the body. So I and I I know that you use this language too, the bottom-up approaches and the top-down approaches, but to me, that nervous system and how it's responding, that is your spirit expressing in your body.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

Yeah, that's that's true. I I I haven't heard it explained but that way, but I agree, yeah. When you explain things, you combine your scientific research that you've studied with a lot of these more eastern approaches. You combine it all with your the way you help people, right?

SPEAKER_01 16:05

I think it's all merging together now, too, with quantum physics, you know. The yes there's a really great um quantum uh physicist, he's Canadian actually, uh Nassim Nasim Haramai, and he says, uh spirituality is just physics they haven't found an equation for yet.

SPEAKER_02 16:24

Oh wow, that's a great quote.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

Yeah, I love it. I love it, and I think it's probably pretty close to the truth.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yeah, well, it's it reminds me about how they're they're discovering a lot of scientists have started discovering that, oh, the ancient yogis actually did know a lot about the nervous system. With all this scientific re research that we know that yoga's got a great science base. A lot of modalities we use yoga therapy to help with a lot of things in in India particularly, they use it for all sorts of ailments and conditions as well as a therapeutic treatment plan. When you initially started practicing yoga, did you feel it helped your nervous system then, or do you think it was too much of a the modern way yoga's taught in that the stereotypical way?

SPEAKER_01 17:24

Yeah, I I think it depends a lot on the yoga teacher. And so I've had different ones over the years that have been um because it can really guide you, you know, guide you to a deeper experience. So I've had some that have been more leaning towards that than uh than others, others uh and even in the same studio, which has been really funny. You know, I remember going to this this studio and it was hot yoga, and there were some instructors I really felt like really getting deep, you know, with it. And then other ones coming and saying, Oh, we're gonna have a great workout today. And I'm like, oh, this is different. Yes, this is different. So it just really depends on on who's leading it, I think, and um and they can really change your experience of it and take you to that deeper connection.

Gratitude Forgiveness And Emotional Release

SPEAKER_02 18:18

It can greatly differ, definitely. I've gone to yoga classes where it's felt like a gymnastics competition all about flexibility and handstands, and I've I've come out feeling worse than I did at the start of class, and we want to come out feeling better and in that state of yoga of oneness. We want our practices to get us into that state of yoga ideally. But yeah, so you use breath work and you use forgiveness and gratitude with you use this with yourself as part of your research into a holistic approach. Can you talk about how that's helped your nervous system to reduce your pain and improve your quality of life overall?

SPEAKER_01 19:14

I mean, grat gratitude to kind of start off with that one, it's uh it it's a really fast way to shift out of that worrying about the future and ruminating over the past. It's it's just like, what am I grateful for right now? So I find that gratitude is a quick shift to bring you into the present and just like things are good. You can't be feeling lack, right? Uh, which is you know, if you're if you're worrying about the future or if you're ruminating over the past, that's a feeling of lack. And so if you're if you focus on what what's good in your life right now, or right in front of you, or right around you, then that's sort of an immediate shift. So I love a gratitude practice for that.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Did you write a journal or something? Sorry to interrupt.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

I do different things over the years. I've had journals. Sometimes I'm, you know, lately I've been doing this, writing 10 things down at the end of the day. I have this also holding a rock in my hand when I just as I'm going to bed and think about the best things that happen that day. You know, what's the one best thing, of course, that you're thinking of all the best things that happened that day. Um, I've done, you know, little journal, I mean, all kinds of things. I think what matters is is making it a regular practice, whatever you do, and um, and feeling the feelings. It's not just like, okay, I gotta write down the three things.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

It's like it's it's about feeling where it is in your body, where you feel feeling it in your body, feeling it in your body.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

So love that. Um, and you know, breath work is is just it's the quickest way, the quickest way to shift your nervous system. Um, you know, really in the body. And it's I I love breath work because it's free, and it's portable, you've always got it with you. Anyone can do it. You can teach little kids this, you can teach older people that. And everyone knows, they can feel it right away when they start to slow down that breath, they can just get that immediate, immediate kind of feeling. Um, so I can't remember, was that the three things, two things you asked for? Was there another thing?

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Something about we'll get I'll get go back to breath work in a moment. There was something about forgiveness in there, I thought.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Forgiveness, yeah. Well, you know, if we holding on to emotions, you know all about this. We can hold linen. Yeah, we're holding it somewhere in our body. And so release. It has to be released. Different ways of doing that. I mean, physically you can do it like in the way that you. Teach Liz, you know, really loosening up those muscles or getting in touch with the body. There's there's other ways you and I um on my podcast were talking about EMDR, and I did a really wonderful uh practice call, it was called uh blink therapy.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

It was still using eyes.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yeah, but it was also some of the back and forth, back and forth, and then up and down and blinking, blinking, blinking, and you know, um while making statements. Um, I love tapping, EFT tapping as a as a release tool as well. And then another thing I I really well, like just because I love journaling, but um I call it freedom talk journaling, where you set a timer to either journal or you can speak as well. Um, just get out your feelings because so many of us, especially women, we were sort of taught, you know, be a good girl, don't say anything, zip it up, right? Be polite, all those things. And so I really encourage my uh my students to do this freedom talk journaling by setting a timer for 20 minutes. You only do this once a day, so we want to get emotions out, but we don't want to dwell in them. So we don't want people sitting in it all day. So just a timer for 20 minutes, and you write or speak and you swear, you call people bad names, you do you do all of those things, whatever, like almost like a little tantrumy three-year-old, you know, just say whatever you want to say, like let it all out. And then when the timer's up, you take that piece of paper, tear it up, get rid of it, you don't read it again. We don't want to like rehash it. The purpose is to get it out and then let it go. Um, and I have found that really therapeutic, and I've done that in different ways too. Sometimes I'll be like, I'll just like write about whatever bubbles up from my childhood, and I do that, you know, that will be a practice I might do every day for a while until nothing's really coming up anymore. And that's been really eye-opening. The things that can come up that you think, well, I haven't thought about that. Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_02 24:19

Yeah, that's why I'm feeling this way.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Yeah, it's just and and it's just like not even really asking for it, just okay, here's my framework. I'm gonna just write a little something about today, a little something about my childhood, and then a little something about how that showed that thing in my childhood shows up today in my my personality or my life. And that practice, I you know, didn't do it forever, just did it for a little while, and that was eye-opening to see what came up there as well. And it's not that we want to get in our heads and analyzing it all, because that's I find so many people are trying to do that. They're like, I gotta like, I what they don't want to talk about it, and I don't think we really need to talk about it and rehash it or any of that. So sometimes that can be re-traumatizing. Just we just need to get it out, and it might be expressing it, you know, verbally, it might be writing it down, it might be doing body work to release it. So there's a lot of different things. The tapping, you know, all those different things. But here's what I do know: if we are hanging on to resentment or anger or hurts or sadness or expressed anger, repressed anger, all those things, they are preventing us from healing. So we do it for ourselves, we do it for ourselves and for our bodies, and you know, we've got this one vehicle to get through this life, so we may as well like get it all released so that it can be the best it can be for us.

SPEAKER_02 25:55

Yeah, I learned more about this repressed anger and holding on to things with um one of my modules in yoga therapy on psychosomatic posturing and what to see for in people with like digging their heels in and all that energy tightness flowing through their posterior chain, their backside, and a lot of these people also have hip cracks in their heels from all that heel digging, and as my mentor and teacher said, it's that psychological running, and she's psychologically running, and it's a great way, and and a lot of these people also that heel dig a lot, that heel dig a lot, there was research behind them losing iron. So people who want to who have too much iron in their system were told to heel dig, but people like me who had repressed anger and probably still do a little bit, lose that iron without wanting to, and get you can notice me heel dig. Part of the reason I do do that was be is because of arthritis and a big toe, but you can see it in the psychosomatic posture of the heel digging in that repressed anger. And you also said you felt things in your shoulders and in your neck.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Yeah, I mean, I and one of the the traumas that I had was being teased a lot when I was little, and I mean, so much so that I stuttered. Oh I don't remember it, but I did apparently I did stutter, and uh my parents are really worried, and so obviously, you know, if I was stuttering, I didn't feel safe speaking, right? I didn't feel yeah, so I think looking at it now, I think that was, you know, the foundation of neck, shoulder, and then I think with my mother's, you know, dealing with all of that, that felt like a very heavy weight to me, like you know, and I I always love these things we have in our language, you know, I've got the weight of the world on my shoulders, and so that was a lot of the shoulder issue, and I always felt like you know, I you you mentioned like people pleasing and perfectionism and all of those things. I think those Gaber Mate calls them behavioral adaptations, right? They are behavioral adaptations we create to um to protect us, yeah, because we couldn't fight and we couldn't flee when we're lit little, so what do we do? Okay, I've got to be good and perfect, or or you know, all of these things in order to make sure that I'm safe in this family, and so I kind of went through my whole life taking on everything. I was president of the swim club and president of the chess club and meet manager when the swim meets were held here, and you know, I just did all of those things, so I was carrying that weight all the time, and that's why there was so much tension there, yeah, yeah, exactly. So I I do find it interesting, these uh words that we use in our language, how we sort of carry things, like you said, digging in the heels, right? Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Um, you know, what a pain in the neck. Those those things we have in our language are real indicators of where our so I'm gonna use my like sort of neuroscience kind of language here, where our brain might decide it's gonna turn on pain to protect us or stiffen up to protect us.

SPEAKER_02 29:46

Yeah, it's a protective shield, and it blocks the it blocks the energy. We see these blockages and blocks the fascia, no doubt. Yeah, pain there as well because of the fascia. And maybe that's why people get arthritis in certain parts of their body, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

And there's you know, we think it's arthritis. So here's uh I've done so much research into all this that they they now know if they did a um if they took a set sample of the population with no pain and they did MRIs or x-rays, they would find arthritis in everyone. But they don't have pain. Even young people with different age, but of course, you know, maybe more as as older as well. But the point is just because you have arthritis doesn't mean that that's the source of your pain. But if you've got pain and then you get an MRI and you're told, oh, you have arthritis in this knee, that's the source of your pain. Well, then people think it's the arthritis. So I mean it's quite interesting because people with terrible arthritis, you know, as shown in an MRI or an x-ray, can have no pain. So it's not the arthritis itself. Same with uh a lot of back issues, you know, um uh bulge discs or disc abnormalities, right? So if they if they they have done these studies where they've done MRIs on the pop general population with no pain, and they find disc abnor abnormalities in you know 70% of them, maybe not exactly that number, but you know, it's pretty high. Yeah and they have no pain.

SPEAKER_02 31:32

Yes, I I read I learned about bulge disc studies in the fascia with one of my teachers who's in Canada, Canada, actually in Vancouver, and studied with the spine mechanic, Dr. Stuart McGill, about there is a lot of people who have disc bulges but they're asomatic, asymptomatic, sorry. Um because their fascia is healthy, they don't have all that because the the fascia's rich in nerve receptors, but Bernie talks about how it's especially rich in certain areas, and that's why a lot of people don't have symptoms because their fascia's healthy, and if you live long enough, you're gonna bulge your disc.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Or or have arthritis, or but not yeah, and but the body will also compensate, it finds workarounds, you know, even if there's an injury. I mean, if you even think about someone who uh loses their eyesight, their hearing improves, right? So the body will compensate for you know things that you know maybe this isn't working right way, it will compensate. But if we're told, and we're we've just been, you know, conditioned for to to this, that if we've got if we've got pain, then there's a physical reason for the pain. And what we're learning, yeah, what we're learning from neuroscience now is that um there's well the numbers are saying are like 70 to 80 percent, eight seventy to eighty percent of chronic pain is actually brain-based, like the brain turning it on in a response to a nervous system that doesn't feel safe, uh, rather than a physical reason.

SPEAKER_02 33:25

Yes, pretty amazing. Oh, because of trauma affecting the brain so much with pain receptors in the change in fascia. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Yep. And the emotional emotional pain receptors and physical pain receptors in the brain apparently are like running, kind of like running on the same highway. So you can have emotional pain and it can turn on physical pain, especially if you're if you've had an injury, like actually had an injury before, the brain kind of knows that pathway. And so it's more likely to turn on that one because it's an it's a path that's already been learned.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

There's a neural pathway, yeah, because of the neuroplasticity in the brain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

There's I mean, and the promising results of using, you know, a brain-based approach, like uh like pain reprocessing, and there, I mean, it's amazing that people have had back pain for 10 years and they do like eight treatments of this pain reprocessing therapy, and the pain is gone in like I don't know, it's a high percentage.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

We've talked about work you do with forgiveness and gratitude. You did mention about breath work being the best tool. What have you done to breathe better? Because it's I mean, it's easy to say to someone, oh just breathe better, or just take a breath. But you know, what I it's not always easy to do.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

No, well, what I teach, I've I've taken everything that I've learned, and it's been nine years now studying all of this, and you know, actually coaching for a long time as well, and and my own experience and studies, and I've hosted summits, I've talked to hundreds of people now, experts in this, and I put it together in a framework, and because I'm an engineer, I like to use you know fun engineering terms, so I call it my design blueprint.

SPEAKER_02 35:25

Yeah, my father would appreciate that being an engineer.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

So the word design is an acronym for basically the path uh to follow, and it starts with so the first the first D in the D in the design is desire. So in that one, I've got a foundational like breath work is a foundational practice. So practice belly breathing if you haven't been doing it, then just start practicing that. But have three times a day at least where you're coming back to a calm presence. I call it create calm. That's the that's the name of the habit with the breath. The other part of this desire is creating a vision of your healed and healthy self, combining, combining that with feelings in the body, perhaps some music, because that can also elevate emotions, maybe some small actions, and then keep repeating that, and so that you know, this song, I love doing this with my students because the song becomes almost like they're they can hear it all the time once they start playing it a lot, and it's very it uplifts them. So, what we're doing, we're changing emotions because we have to change our emotional state in order to change the the response of the nervous system, and so so that's our first step, desire, and then the second step is explore, and then in that one, we're adding in um some more uh brain sort of retraining through affirmations. So we're seeding the subconscious mind with affirmations from the conscious mind, and we've got to be really careful with affirmations, picking ones that really feel right, and so that our mind doesn't like put up resistance. Um, so I help people find the right ones for that, and then kalpa in Yoga Nidra. Yeah, yeah. And then the um, then we move into um in the explore step as well, really starting to focus on uh on that really it's it's love and feelings of love in the body, um, because that raises heart rate variability, which we know then drop, you know, so there's a lot of science, but it's also like in you know, really coming back to love and accepting that we are we came here really as a loving person, and all that's happened is that we've blocked it, so it's releasing those blocks to love. So desire explore surrender is the S. That's about forgiveness, but it's also a tie-in, like we need to surrender to sleep. So many people are are really not sleeping well, so I have some habits in there about you know, daily habits about creating, um, setting yourself up for a better sleep. So, desire, explore, surrender, integrate. This is where we're really kind of doing more of those um lifestyles, so it's about uh nourishing yourself. But I don't even really start with food, I start with how you eat, you know, are you being present and eating slightly and enjoying mindful eating? And then uh the next part is about well, if we want to serve our body, then how can we not challenge it too much with toxins and things like that, and and then also connect to the earth more? So I've tie that in. And we might have to go back to some forgiveness work there. And then the last uh the last step is um navigate. So that's uh really now expressing ourselves in this world. So it's about creativity, it's about being curious, about learning, expanding your knowledge. So it's really it's an entire lifestyle that's really about coming into that true, trueful expression of yourself. And it's through doing that and calming the nervous system that then the body, we don't really have to concentrate on what do I have to do about this pain that I've got here. It's no, it's about coming back to calm and feeling joyful and these positive emotions that then set the nervous system up to return to calm, which then the body just has its own wisdom to take over and heal, then so it's a holistic approach like Ayurveda and yoga therapy. Yeah.

Breathwork That Shifts The System

SPEAKER_02 40:08

And I mean, because people don't think there's a there's nothing to do with yoga and nutrition and Ayurveda's yoga sister science, and I know early on in my journey with quitting smoking after many failed attempts, thanks to yoga, that yoga can help us start to respect our body more with the practice of ahimsa. And I'm not the first person to quit such a habit or other habits and start to eat better to serve our body with a bit more prana life force. But how did you help people breathe properly? Because a lot of people breathe too much, they breathe through their mouth a lot, um and even us yoga teachers don't always breathe well, and a lot of us yoga teachers focus merely on the breath mechanics, not the breath chemistry, which doctor not he's not a doctor, Patrick McCowan. Oh, yeah, I love his right. Yeah. So what sort of is there any particular praniama? It doesn't have to be pranayama because pranayama is a certain type of breathworking yoga that has the qualities of diaga and shukshma, that long and subtle. But are there any particular breathwork exercises? I can call it exercises because it's not necessarily pranayama, but that you give your clients to help them facilitate better breath mechanics and chemistry.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

Uh I mean I love breath work and I could teach it all day long. And I there's so many wonderful breath works, you know, honestly. There's there's just so many of them. I mean, the foundational one, I think that a lot of times that's what I do. I come back to the foundations. The the foundational breath work is, you know, breathe in and breathe, especially breathe in through your nose. You could exhale through the mouth sometimes, but um but mostly it's you know, folk that inhale, and it's also down in the belly. And what I this is what I found. I was so tight down here. People would say take a belly breath, and I'd be like, like I just couldn't do it. And so what I teach people is to start with an exhale, and in the exhale, you pull the belly button back towards the spine, okay, and then when you go to inhale, there's somewhere for it to go, so and it you you know it can come down low then, okay, pushing, pushing the belly button out again, and so even in doing that, and I you know do this through the nose, when when people just have that to focus on, um, they will take longer breaths, they will be deeper breaths, they will be breathing in and out through the nose, and then uh then I try to encourage them to do that long exhale because the long exhales activate parasympathetic state, you know, also lower pain. So that's kind of what I start with the basics, and then if anyone wants, you know, has some other stuff, then I'm like, oh, let me tell you about this type. I mean, I love four, seven, eight breathing, and I can't remember the yogic name for it now, but yeah, I don't know if they're I don't know the yogic name.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

I do know what you mean, the four, seven, eight, because you breathe in for four, hold for seven, breathe out for eight.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

That is one that I really love because I what I find with that one is that it gives the mind something to do. It gives the mind a bone, yeah. It gives the mind something to do. And I think I don't know if this is the actual truth, but I think this is my theory that when you're holding, because it's quite a long breath hold in that, the seven. And I think when we're holding the breath, that subconscious mind is like, I don't know when the next breath is coming. I've got to let go of something else because the breath is the priority.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Well it's got to let go of something else, then.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

Yeah. And so I think that's why it works really well. This is my theory, anyway. So I I find I do talk uh frequently about four, seven, eight breathing.

SPEAKER_02 44:39

It's like it is a more advanced one, but it's really not everyone can hold their breath for that long and then for so long. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

Yeah. It's more advanced. Um, but a lot of people that I work with, because I work with a lot of older women, menopausal women often have uh trouble sleeping. Yes, the pain is also interfering with their sleep. So I'm like, okay, if you're awake during the night, you could try this, and this may help you begin to relax because you're giving your brain something to focus on. You're it may the subconscious mind may release something because it's like wondering where this next breath is coming from. And then the other really core one is a is a channel breath. Um, you know, it's sort of a yeah, through the chakra. So imagine breathing in through um, I I'm thinking of more breaths now than breath works that I love, but I I do love this one. Coming down and like focusing on on each of the chakras as you inhale and then exhaling into the earth and just really creating this energetic circuit. So re then you can repeat that uh inhaling up from the earth through the root into the belly, and then exhaling up through the solar plexus, the heart, that you know, that one heart-focused breathing is another one.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

I mean, I do like a visualization, bhavana.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

Yeah, yeah, step four or habit number four is really a heart-focused breathing. And then um the other, I use a lot of breath work for uh pain reduction as well. So peat breathing, I call it breathing patterns for pain relief. So basically, it's imagine like if your pain was in your shoulder, for example, yeah, you would imagine breathing in through the fingertips and inhaling the breath up to the shoulder. But I combine it with imagine that the shoulder is a small child that's hurt or pet that you love dearly that's been hurt. Oh, yes. And so you you sort of you sort of imagine I I've got you, everything's okay, you're alright, I'm here for you. And then you pull the breath, imagine it coming into your heart and filling up with love again, and then exhaling, lingering wherever you're feeling pain out through the fingertips, and then doing the circuit again, and then maybe you might do some up and down and and so on. So it's sort of an intentionality of loving kindness to the area, and then I think with this focusing on the imagining the breath moving, I mean, really, it's like energy, you know, we're moving energy through the body. Yeah, so I can't say I have just one breath work after me saying no, no, definitely not just one.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

I didn't expect you to have one. Um, I mean that and humming. Oh, humming, of course.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

Humming. I mean, I love humming. I just love humming. Activates the the the parasympathetic state, builds up, you know, the nitric oxide. I mean, what's not to like about humming?

Meeting Anxiety With Agency

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Yeah, there's a lot of scientific research behind that with be breath and humming. Yeah. Do you have any clients though, or have you had any clients like who've got such anxiety, like probably stemming from some sort of trauma, that just taking a breath is hard, or just calming down if they're feeling that revved up that you just you saying to them, Oh, just go and lie down and visualize the chakras or whatever. No, you gotta meet them where they are. Yeah, so how would you meet them where they are? We've said that.

SPEAKER_01 48:35

For some of them, it's sort of reminding them. Uh, I'm just thinking about one today, actually. Um, very revved up, and you know, in the session, of course, when we're together, uh, creating calm, like, okay, all right. And then immediately after, you know, I'm hearing, I felt so good yesterday, and today I'm like, I'm like, okay, all right. We just gotta remember this is this is just a thought you're having. Not every thought is true. Just come back. And and the other thing that happens with people as they begin to calm, start to calm down, our our brain loves to predict. That's what it does. It predicts and protects. And so when people start to, if they've been so revved up all the time and they start to calm, all of a sudden, their brain, nervous system, you know, is like, what who is this? This isn't the one we know. And so it might even start to like act up again. Then you gotta just remind, okay, this is what's going on. And sometimes I'll I'll use it, just depends on the person and what might work. Uh, sometimes you might talk about like a phrase that might help you feel calm, or or maybe something you could do, like to put on music, or it might be giving this part of you that's trying to protect you. Now, I'm not an expert in parts therapy at all in internal family systems, but I like the idea of this, that this part of you that's trying to protect you is coming from a loving place, but you can also ask that part to, you know, it can speak its mind, give it a chance to speak. Maybe you might do the freedom talk journaling for that. But you can also say, I'm in the driver's seat, you can sit in the passenger seat right now. Um, you can come along, but I'm driving, you can just stay there. Um, you know, I understand that you're trying to protect me, that kind of language. So a lot of times it just depends on the person and kind of finding what works for them, and and them finding what works for them because ultimately what I want to do is empower everyone to be their own coach.

SPEAKER_02 50:47

Yeah, well, they're all different.

SPEAKER_01 50:49

Yeah, to have their have the awareness, like, okay, I see what I'm doing here, and to have some tools and strategies that they know work for them to bring them down to the calm place again.

SPEAKER_02 51:03

Give them a yeah, so you're helping them create agency and empowerment.

SPEAKER_01 51:08

Yeah, actually, in my in my membership, uh, I have a it's called Living Pain Free. It's um it's a monthly membership where I do coaching, you know, twice a month and so on. But I have a theme every month, and our theme last month was agency.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Oh, okay, that's great. Yeah, yes, it's uh a theme, it's a a principle in trauma-informed and trauma-sensitive yoga.

SPEAKER_01 51:30

Oh, really? I didn't know that. It just, you know, we have to take responsibility for our actions and and response and responsibility for our responses, and we should be allowed to have responsibility, but people with trauma have often had that taken away from them. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

Well, thanks so much, Jane, for sharing your story and how you help people. So you've got a membership, and that's the main way people work with you and private one-on-one sessions.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

I don't do any private coaching, but I do um three times a year, I do a small group. It's like no more than eight students, and it's a 12-week um program where we go work through each one of these steps and habits in the blueprint, and so it's a really small group, it's very loving, there's a lot of support, and I run that three times a year. That one's called Calm by Design, and uh, and then my membership, which is open all the time, is called Living Pain Free. So that's the two main things. And I have a book out called Um Pain Free on Purpose. The the design blueprint is in there if anyone wants to read it and follow along. And I so I I want to, if anyone can't afford any programs, there's that book as well, and they can do that themselves. Of course, in coaching, there's support, right? Because yeah, I always say it's you can't see the picture when you're in the frame, so it's sometimes hard to be your own coach. But if you learn co self-coaching tools, then that empowers you then to have that awareness and agency throughout the rest of your life.

SPEAKER_02 53:13

I'll have to look at that book. And has that got your research with the pain free on purpose on why you do it recommends certain things and all of that in there? Yeah. Oh well, that sounds great. I'll put that in the notes. I'm assuming you can buy it on Amazon here for people here in Australia. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Yep. I've had people in Australia buy my book before, so yeah. I've had some I've had some people on my programs in Australia as well.

SPEAKER_02 53:39

Oh, great, that's wonderful. That's the beauty of online work, isn't it? That we can share these.

SPEAKER_01 53:45

Yeah, it's amazing, truly amazing.

SPEAKER_02 53:48

Yeah, I'm grateful for what you do, Jane, and I'm grateful for you coming on the show. It'll be part of today's gratitude journal, as I find it really useful as well and beneficial. And thank you for coming on and thank you for doing that. And I've learned something today, and I'm what is there anything else you would like to add to this conversation for listeners?

How To Work With Jane

SPEAKER_01 54:14

Yeah, I'd love to. Well, if anyone wants to go to my website, thewellnessengineer.com, right on the main page. Um, there's a gift they could download. And um, I think what's there right now is 10 questions uh to help you understand if you're experiencing chronic pain and it hasn't gone away, is 10 questions to help you see if the pain that you're experiencing is this type of pain that um that that can be unlearned. So the brain learns pain, it can be unlearned. So there's a that's a really great tool. I've got other things there as well. But yeah, if you want to join me in my on my uh website, you can go there and get that.

SPEAKER_02 54:55

I'll have a look at that too. That sounds really interesting. And I I've got friends who would really benefit from that, and I'm sure there's many listeners here who would benefit from that. So thanks, Jane. That's great. Well, thank you so much for having me as a guest today. I really enjoyed it. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Thanks again for tuning in. If you loved the show, my guests and I would really appreciate a five star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time, never forget the power of yoga.