Rewire Your Brain in 2 Minutes a Day: the Path to Healing — with Lissa M Cowan | BlissTalk Podcast

Lissa Cowan shares her transformative journey with mindful writing, meditation, and healing from long COVID and chronic pain. Discover how simple daily practices can rewire your brain, foster creativity, and promote healing.

Meditative writing isn’t just a quiet moment with a notebook—it can be a practical path back to calm and a supportive companion through illness, including Long COVID. In this episode, Canadian writer and teacher Lissa Cowan shares how blending daily meditation with mindful, free-flow writing helped her navigate chronic pain, endometriosis, and a two-year Long COVID journey marked by fatigue, breathlessness, and reduced capacity.

Writing is my medicine, my way to heal. ~ Lissa M Cowan

We explore how simple, consistent practices can soothe the nervous system (shifting from fight/flight into “rest and digest”), gently retrain the brain’s pathways toward health, and re-open creativity as a life force—not a hobby. 

Lissa also offers a compassionate reminder to create a safe space, suspend self-judgment, and let the page meet you exactly where you are.

What you’ll learn

• A simple meditative-writing routine you can start today (pen + paper, 10 minutes).
• How creative practices support nervous-system regulation and recovery from prolonged stress and illness.
• Gentle mindset shifts for Long COVID: imagining future wellbeing, noticing “glimmers,” and pacing without self-pressure.
• Why creativity at work and home expands options, optimism, and connection.
  
  

Creativity is the essence of life and healing. ~ Lissa M Cowan

Resources & next steps

• Try Lissa’s bite-size exercises to build a daily calm practice with Lissa's course available at: https://learn.blisspot.com/courses/Ease-into-Calm-5-5-5
• Book a one-on-one session with Lissa: https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule/bf6a9a81/?calendarIds=3418258
• Discover more about Lissa's offerings here: https://www.lissamcowan.com/
• Explore related Blisspot programs on micro-habits, resilience, and nervous-system regulation here: https://blisspot.com

If this episode resonates, please follow, rate, and share it with someone who’s recovering from Long COVID or navigating a tough season—the right practice, done little and often, can make a meaningful difference.

Neural pathways can be changed with daily practice. ~ Lissa M Cowan

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Meditative Writing

02:21 Lisa's Journey with Mindful Writing

04:06 Chronic Illness and Healing through Writing

09:50 The Power of Neural Pathways

12:29 Commitment to Healing

17:34 Creativity as a Healing Tool

21:42 Tips for Mindful Writing

24:21 The Importance of Creativity in Life

28:33 Empowerment through Self-Healing

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Transcript

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (00:12)
So hello everyone, I'm absolutely delighted to be here today with our very special guest all the way from Canada on the other side of the world, Lissa Cowan, to talk about meditative writing. And this is an incredible topic that Lissa is a master in. So I'm very excited to hear the insights and also her story that she has to share with you today.

Lissa is a writer, teacher and a creator of the 21 Day Writing Meditation course used by over three million people on Daily Om. She has written Ease into Calm, a two minute a day pathway to a happier, healthier and longer life which is available on Blisspot From her beautiful treetop home, which I've actually seen a lot of in

incredible photographs on Instagram of the amazing place that you live in Lissa always so inspiring and beautiful, so beautiful that you share it with us all In the Gatineau Hills in Canada, she helps people strengthen their inner voice and meet themselves on the page through mindful writing, editing and mentoring. Grounded in daily meditation, somatic bodywork,

and Jungian dream work. I mean what a powerful combination and shaped by her two decade journey with chronic pain Lissa treats writing as a medicine a way to heal reveal and return to your center that actually sends shivers down my spine as I say it because it's so powerful but so beautiful as well. She's the author of five books she really walks the talk including the novel Milk Fever and teaches at

Lissa (01:53)
and two.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (02:05)
the University of Calgary's writing program with a graduate studies at the University of Montreal and the University of Victoria. Lissa, welcome. We are so pleased to have you here with us today.

Lissa (02:21)
Thank you so much, Deborah, and thank you for that beautiful introduction. I'm so happy to be here and to be sharing what I've learned about mindful writing with others, because I feel like it truly has changed my life. it's changed my brain. It's changed my body. It's changed my heart. I feel like and it's so simple,

all you need is a paper or a notebook and a pen. It's just sometimes when things are very simple, ⁓ people question, they think, no, it can't be that transformative or it can't be that amazing. But it really, really is. ⁓ I started out as a writer when I was really young, about seven years old.

and then had a meditation practice when I was a teenager and I did a lot of meditation. It wasn't until, about 15 years ago that I put the two together. I've always journaled, but not consistently. I have a few friends who journal regularly ⁓ in a journal, like a diary. So I always did that, but it's...

a different thing. It's kind of a little bit of a different beast. mindful writing is something that has really helped me. It's been my medicine through chronic pain with endometriosis ⁓ and just recently, ⁓ through my own struggle with chronic fatigue after I was diagnosed COVID and then I ended up staying.

staying in that zone and getting long COVID. So it's really helped me just over the past two and a half years as well. So.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (04:06)
that's amazing. we had a little pre-chat before the podcast and you were saying that, long COVID has impacted a lot of people. I know some people that it's impacted really badly too. And it's been a very difficult journey for them. Often they're dismissed by the medical doctors or told they're imagining it.

It's not being taken seriously yet. It's a condition that's impacted. the people I know their career relationships how they feel about themselves I'd love you just share a little bit more about that Lissa and yet that journey that you touched on with endometriosis, is a very widely spread problem that

often the medical profession does not have a lot of answers through for. I've ⁓ been down that road with some close relatives looking for answers and it was very, very, very difficult and they learned to control it through food or other methods. I'm really intrigued and interested to know your journey with chronic fatigue.

endometriosis and also long COVID and how you did heal it through your beautiful meditative writing. I just was going to add, isn't it beautiful when your two passions come together, like meditation and writing like it was just meant to be.

Lissa (05:27)
Exactly. Thank you.

Exactly, thank you, Deborah. Yes, so I contracted COVID two and a half years ago and then it didn't really go away and then I got chronic fatigue and heart palpitations and my lung capacity was reduced and I thought this is very strange. At that time I didn't really know about long COVID, not that many people were talking about it.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (06:00)
Thank

Lissa (06:01)
only two and a half years ago now, seems like a lot of people are talking about it. Two and a half years ago, I could barely rest myself. I was just really incapacitated. I sleeping 12, 16 hour days. I had to leave work for, sickness leave.

for ⁓ over a year because I couldn't work. ⁓ So it was very serious I went to see my doctor, they weren't offering me much. ⁓ They hadn't started diagnosing or there's no way to actually diagnose it, but there's over 200 symptoms associated with long COVID.

⁓ So I, as I do as a writer, I love to research and I went down all sorts of rabbit holes. I was researching, ⁓ you know, what this was that had taken over my body. And ⁓ long COVID is actually chronic fatigue syndrome. ⁓ I was looking at a lot at ⁓

mind research and how ⁓ when we have a chronic illness, like long COVID, we tend to think, no, that's going to keep happening and we're going to keep being sick. ⁓ There's something that humans have, which is called negative capability, which is that when we've had something for a long time and it's chronic, we just think that

this is just going to be the way it is. And it's hard when you're sick, no matter what you have, it's hard to focus on something else and not focus on the illness, right? But through all this research I was doing, I learned that we can actually create neural pathways in our brain. I'd read about this before, but I was really digging deep because my doctor didn't have any answers. I was part of a long COVID clinic.

in my community. So that was helpful. There was a physiotherapist that ran that. ⁓ But I had to stop work, I had to stop exercising, which I love to do. I wasn't running anymore. I wasn't going out and seeing my friends. ⁓ After a year, I could only do one thing a day. ⁓ Before that I was living a really full life. So the this whole idea about neural pathways and how we can

change our mind, can literally change our mind. There's a connection between that and mindful writing because when we're writing, we're putting our emotions down on a page, but we're also retraining our brain not to go to the fight or flight or freeze, which is located in the amygdala of our brain. It's the prefrontal cortex

is the decision making. And oftentimes when we go right to, panic mode,  we can't see the forest for the trees. We don't feel in control. ⁓ And that's often what happens when we have some sort of chronic condition. And with long COVID, that's what was happening with me. I was focusing on obviously getting better, which is what we should be doing, but

not necessarily on visioning what my life was before or what my life could be in the future. ⁓ So I started imagining and writing, you know, running, running up the hill or, you know, and I put that Kate Bush song on, I don't know if some people know about it, running up the hill. But I had a soundtrack, so I had a soundtrack of positive songs and, you know, superhero type songs. And

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (09:40)
Yeah, I do.

Lissa (09:51)
Every morning I would sit down and I would write and I would write, wow, look how strong you are, Lissa. Look how, you know, brave you are. And you just ran up that big hill. Isn't that amazing? So doing that every day with my meditation practice and with my mindful writing practice was basically rewiring my brain for health.

Because the mind and the body, you know, Deborah, are so intimately linked. We can have something structural going on in our body that actually heals, but our brain still thinks that we're sick because we're sending it all these messages that we're sick. I could be completely better physically, structurally in my body

and still have the symptoms of long COVID, still have the symptoms of chronic fatigue. ⁓ So the way to get out of that is ⁓ to stay in rest and digest mode, which is the parasympathetic nervous system as opposed to the sympathetic nervous system. So not to just be in react mode, right? And so much of our lives, of course, you know, with social media and all the things that surround us, it's all about reacting. And we are rarely

in rest and digest mode unless we're meditating, we're on vacation, maybe we're having a swim or we're doing something that really feeds the playful aspect of ourselves. It's hard when you're really sick and you have a hard time dressing yourself to say, I'm going to be playful today. Because you don't feel playful. You feel like just going to bed. ⁓

I'm not 100 % better yet, but I'm on the way and I feel like I'm probably 85 to 90 % better. So it's been a really long journey, but I know that mindful writing has helped me because it's enabled me to retrain my brain for health, for healing. And that's something that...

when we get into the lower brain, we're just reacting. There's no opportunity for us to actually heal. So my mindful writing practice there were other things too, obviously, but I feel like that was one of the big tools that really set me on the path for health.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (12:29)
That's amazing Lissa and like you said that these processes are easy and they're free and they don't take a lot of time but one thing I would like to point out to our audience because at Bliss Spot we love to share life skills our whole mission is to share life skills for personal and professional success and a lot of the

concepts are easy, but one thing which I have to take my hat off to you is your commitment. And I feel that when you're not feeling well to do it every day and to keep going, because it's even though the concepts are simple and they are easy, sometimes they're not easy to do. And it's also our ego goes, this is not working or people will try an affirmation for a few days and go.

oh, they're not working or positive thinking really doesn't work but what I'm hearing from you is you're feeling 85 % better, which is a fantastic achievement. And it's taken time and it's the commitment and to rewire our brain. Like a lot of us have been holding onto conditions. It could be for 30 years, 40 years. It could be for nearly all of our life, 50 years, 60 years.

And yet we want a result quickly. We want a pill, we want it to be gone tomorrow. Of course, that would be the ideal way. But it makes sense that to rewire our brain, might take, a month before we're starting to feel, a little bit better then two, three months, six months before we're feeling significantly better. And a year or so before we're totally better, if it's a condition that's taken a long time

evolve. So I admire your commitment and I do believe it's what you do little and often that makes the biggest difference You've done this in a completely drug-free way from what I hear you're saying.

Lissa (14:31)
Yes, I took a lot of supplements at the start. In terms of any kind of medication, there wasn't really anything. Maybe there is now. ⁓ My doctor didn't really have anything to offer me except, why don't you join the long COVID clinic and you can talk to a group of people who have similar issues.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (14:35)
Yeah.

Lissa (14:52)
There wasn't really anything there. as far as I can tell because there are so many symptoms included in the long COVID, there's over 200 symptoms. There are certainly some medications for different symptoms. But in terms of chronic fatigue, ⁓ to my knowledge,

There's no panacea. You can't just take a pill and be better. I've been able to help heal myself. And it has been hard work. So I appreciate you pointing that out, Deborah. It's not easy to show up every day and just say that, OK, I'm going to do a meditation. I'm going to do some mindful writing.

And this is going to help me with my healing journey. ⁓ Because in our society, we tend to think that if it doesn't work right away, then it's not going to work. But I feel like this journey, it has been slow, it has been gradual, but I saw glimmers of hope.

almost right away and then I'd have a crash. And so I knew that I was on the right track, even if my body wasn't there yet. Knew that this was the way to go. I think most of us are really busy and we have full lives. At the beginning, I thought, well, maybe if I just stop one or two things, I...

was a member of a dragon boating club and I was running all the stuff, right? I just had to take away so many things in order to be in rest and digest for a longer period of time. It's not easy to do It's not easy to say, okay, I'm not gonna go out with friends or I'm not gonna do this

because I need to really listen to my body, need to really get down and deep into my body and just see what is my body going through? What is being expressed by my body? What does my body need? And even all the work I've done and all the meditation didn't prepare me for this. I was stripped bare with this. now I'm...

slowly, gradually putting things back on my plate. it was definitely, I would say an awakening.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (17:30)
An incredible journey and so much there and how important it is to get our body, out of fight or flight, out of survival or freeze and back into our natural state of thriving. If our body's not functioning, it's saying to us, we just need to rest.

and like you say, take away those things and find out what's really going on and rebuild from there. That's really interesting. Something I've been wanting to ask you about is as a part of a course I did on relationships, we studied automatic writing and we had to do it with our left hand. Do you know anything about that? And the idea was it would get you out of your thinking.

because you're writing with your, not dominant hand. So for me, that was my left hand. And then you get all these insights from, what your body was telling you. It was really interesting. I've still got the writings actually, very scrawly. I can barely read them, but it was interesting what did come up.

Lissa (18:33)
I love that I can imagine because it uses a different part of your brain, right? Your right hand and your left hand. I am left handed, but I have written before with my right hand. And ⁓ it feels so different. It feels like another planet, the right hand, which I'm sure the left hand must feel like for you.

Anything like that that kind of gets you out of your thinking mind, right? And into that creative space where anything's possible. ⁓ That's something that I really love about mindful writing I hear time and time again, students say, I had no idea that...

this was available to me. Had no idea that I could just sit down and write. And I didn't know for instance, that I was frustrated about this thing that this person did today to me, or I didn't know that I really felt that I wanted to do this, that I was pulled to this career, or I needed a career change, because we spend so much time pushing things down and just getting on with it, right?

When we do mindful writing, it's amazing how things can awaken within us that are there, but they're just hidden, right? I love the idea about using the opposite dominant hand, that's a great way to start mindful writing for sure.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (20:06)
What I hear you're saying is that it's a very powerful tool to tap into our creativity which is a very healing space but also a very powerful tool to getting to what is the truth for us because it can seem some way based on the external situation at a surface level

I find myself, if I meditate and I shut my eyes and I tune into what's really going on, it can be quite different to what I thought it was. Like you said, I didn't know I was feeling frustrated. And it's just a fantastic way through meditative writing that you can process those feelings too. And then they don't get expressed in unhealthy ways, all held in your body, which can be very damaging for your body if unexpressed emotions are

unresolved and held on for a long time. That's when disease can happen. So very powerful.

Lissa, what would be your most important tip that you would share with our audience today In your case, you weren't feeling well, you had long COVID, but this is a powerful tool, not just for long COVID, but for many other things. If you're stuck in a relationship or you're

feeling stressed or overwhelmed or anxious in the workplace. It's a powerful tool for very many things, not just for healing illness, which is very, very important. So what is your biggest tip that you could share with our audience today?

Lissa (21:43)
I would say ⁓ to give yourself permission to create ⁓ a safe, ⁓ peaceful space for yourself. And you don't even need a notebook. You can use a piece of paper, ⁓ just something that you can write on and a pen. Give yourself permission to sit down and to write

It's easy for us to judge ourselves, right? When we write or the other day I was with my mom, we're traveling on this remote island and we were sketching and I hadn't drawn for quite a while. And so I was doing a sketch of a boat going by and I could hear that part of myself saying, Lissa, that boat looks, you know, awkward or, and I thought, no, I'm just going to

just go with the flow and whatever comes and be kind to that voice that comes up and says, why are you writing like that? Are you writing so messy? And just giving yourself permission, That's the first step and see what comes. Just allow the process to unfold and see what comes.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (23:00)
Because it can be surprising and insightful and enlightening as you've said. It would be good to touch a little bit more on creativity because we've mentioned that quite a lot When we're in survival we're in a constricted state. We're getting ready to

run or withdraw from some perceived threat. So our body's shut down, we can't think properly, we don't digest food properly. This state is fine for quick periods of time, but it's not healthy for our body to be in survival for very long periods of time. When we're creative, we're taken to a different space, which we can get through dance or art, drawing, as you said, sketching

and writing and so it would be good to talk a little bit more about that creative space because I know in days gone by people have seen creativity as something soft and fluffy or a bonus like it's a nice little hobby What we're talking about is how essential creativity is

and such a powerful tool in making this switch from survival to thriving.

Lissa (24:21)
Exactly, yes, that's so well put, Deborah, thank you. Yes, so when we're in survival mode, you're not able to be creative or playful. It's the opposite. You're just, you're waiting for the wolf, to attack you. Whereas when you're in a more open, receptive mode, which happens when you're...

your writing, for instance, when you're free writing, you become open to more possibilities and creativity. It's not just about, creative writing or drawing or, painting a mural. It's way of life. Creativity is expressed in every single thing that I do from

from cooking to how I interact with people. ⁓ It's something that is connected to curiosity, it's connected to wonder, and it's also something that is the opposite of being closed and non-receptive. It's when we're open and receptive it has to be a safe, comfortable,

we don't want to be open and receptive when a wolf is running toward us, for instance. That gives us opportunities that we might not have expected or looked for, ⁓ maybe in our work or in our professional or personal lives. I feel like that type of receptivity really changes us. It helps us ⁓

It helps us ⁓ reach our goals, ⁓ maybe goals that are just dreams that we don't feel that we can achieve. But when we have that level of receptivity and I would say playfulness as well, ⁓ it becomes this kind of conduit for seeing what else might be possible. ⁓ So I feel like that, obviously I can't always be in that mode.

But I feel like as much as possible, I try to encourage myself to be in that mode. And when I feel the fear, which we all do because we're wired, through evolution, to, look and see what's behind the bush, right? That's how humans are wired. But when I recognize that in my mind and I just say, well, wait a second, is there really a fear here? Is this a real fear? And what if I just pushed it a little more?

What if I did this? ⁓ Then the fear usually ends up dissipating because it's not a real fear. The creativity to me is everything. ⁓ It's how I live my life. I try to infuse creativity in everything.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (27:08)
I love that. It reminds me of years ago I was at the Australian National Gallery and I was lucky enough to see Van Gogh's Starry Night, the real one, and I remember just standing in front of it and it just took my breath away. I felt so joyous and open-hearted. It felt amazing and the parallel I'm making is that

Lissa (27:18)
⁓

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (27:36)
when you practice it every day through the creative writing skills, you invite more of that energy into your life on a daily basis. And when you practice just like if you exercise every day, you bring that strength and you take it into other parts of your life. So you're saying you take that creativity from practicing it

into other parts, you take it into the workplace and if you're in the workplace and you're feeling creative and open as you said to possibilities, you're looking for, you're thinking more innovatively, you're open to different things you could bring into the company to make it better. It's better in your relationships if you feel more open and creative, you think of more fun things to do and ways to relate even in your languaging, it impacts everything.

It's a beautiful tool that ⁓ you're sharing with the world, Lissa. Have you got any last words or thoughts or ideas you'd like to add?

Lissa (28:33)
If there is anybody out there who's struggling with any issue, I'm thinking about how, chronic fatigue over the past two and a half years has really made me realize the power we have to heal ourselves and to change our lives too,

and to do so much more than one could even imagine. I feel like this has really taught me just how powerful we are. And it's tools like this that remind us to look at things in a positive light as opposed to...

⁓ this is happening to me, so it's always going to be the case or, that bad old story. I just feel like it's opened my eyes even more as to how powerful we are to, ⁓ to to reach our goals and to to be happy and to to be healthy.

Even after going through all of this, I look at it as a gift that I can talk to other people about too, because it is something that is within our grasp.

Deborah Tyson ~ Blisspot Founder and CEO (29:45)
believe that any challenge that we have in life is a gift if we choose to see it that way. We can choose our challenges to make us bitter or better and get the learnings and it's wonderful that you not only developed techniques that help yourself on your journey but you now share it with the wider world so other people can get support from the wonderful work

that you do. We are extremely grateful to have Lissa Cowan as part of our Blisspot community and as a beautiful expert that shares her incredible wisdom. If you're ready to put these insights into practice, Lissa's Ease into Calm course, which is a two minute a day pathway to a happier, healthier and longer life is available on Blisspot.

To access it, you simply just sign up as a free member and explore Lissa's course and resources on the platform. Lissa is also available for one-on-one sessions and ⁓ you'll find everything in the show notes. We'll also put in a link to Lissa's ⁓ website so you can discover more of the things that she does there. It's a beautiful, beautiful offering. And so thank you to our wonderful...

audience for joining us today. Thank you so much Lissa for being here and if you enjoyed, yeah I'm very very grateful, if you enjoyed this episode please subscribe, share this episode with a friend, you could help them too if you know somebody that's struggling with long COVID and looking for answers and support on their journey, it would be a wonderful resource for them and I look forward to seeing you all next time. Thank you.

Lissa (31:10)
Thank you.

Thank you.