Topics: Nervous System Reset, Holistic Health, Chronic Pain, Chronic Illness Recovery

 

The Nervous System Reset & Healing Chronic Pain…

 

Get ready to rethink everything you’ve been told about chronic pain, illness and healing.

If you’ve been trying to “optimize” your health but still feel stuck in burnout, mystery symptoms, or food reactivity…think gluten or dairy intolerances—this conversation is for you.

I sit down with Faith Ashenden—founder of That Healing Feeling and nervous system educator—who’s helped thousands of women around the world heal chronic symptoms and reclaim their energy through nervous system reset and holistic health.

From 10 years of chronic illness to rewiring her body’s stress response through deeper mind work, Faith shows you how healing is less about doing more—and more about trusting what’s already inside of you.

If you’ve ever felt unheard, unsupported by medicine, or just tired of not getting answers, Faith’s story will speak straight to your soul.

 

TIMESTAMPS

00:58 – Why Chronic Symptoms Don’t Heal Just from Biohacking
04:45 – The Nervous System & Hidden Signs of Chronic Stress
07:02 – How the Deeper Mind Holds the Key to Holistic Health
13:11 – Food Intolerances & The Truth About What’s Actually Causing Them
17:25 – Identity and Holistic Healing: The Shift That Changed Everything

 

Listen in and discover:

• Why Biohacks Aren’t Helping: The missing root cause behind chronic pain, fatigue, and food reactivity most wellness routines ignore.
• Unlearning Survival Mode: How to finally reset your nervous system and build a trusting mind-body relationship.
• The Aging Myth: Why being over 30 doesn’t have to mean exhaustion, joint pain, or hormonal chaos.

 

You don’t need a perfect routine—just a moment of belief and the willingness to take one tiny step toward becoming your own healer.

 

 

ABOUT FAITH ASHENDEN

Faith Ashenden is a nervous system educator and the founder of That Healing Feeling™—a global brand that helps high-achieving women heal chronic illness and anxiety through subconscious rewiring and nervous system regulation.

After reversing her own chronic conditions that doctors said were “lifelong,” Faith made it her mission to teach others how to heal at the root using science-backed tools, rapid subconscious techniques, and somatic healing practices. Through her signature method, The Health Transformation Accelerator™, she’s helped thousands of women reclaim their energy, regulate their emotions, and build lives that actually feel good to live in.

Her work blends neuroscience with heart—and her message is clear:
Healing doesn’t have to take years. You’re not broken. You just need the right tools

 

CONNECT

Instagram: @thathealingfeeling
Website: www.faithashenden.com
Get the Recovery Formula at 50% off with code “feelgood” here

 

 

LISTEN TO NEXT
Episode: Losing My Voice (ep #306)

 

RESOURCES
7 Steps to Feel Good Nakd book
The Rio Home Workout Plan
Podcast Mentorship

 

CONNECT
Instagram: @itschardet

 

 

MORE ON THIS HOLISTIC HEALTH PODCAST EPISODE

 

“At the root of every chronic symptom is a lack of safety somewhere in the nervous system.” – Faith Ashenden, founder of That Healing Feeling™

 

• Your Symptoms Are Signals, Not Defects
• The Mind-Body Relationship Needs Repair
• Beliefs Can Make (or Break) Your Healing

 

Have you ever looked at your supplement drawer, your food tracker, your perfectly color-coded wellness routine… and still felt awful?

Still exhausted. Still inflamed. Still reactive.
Still no real answers.
If that hits—this blog (and the episode it comes from) is for you.

Because the truth is, chronic symptoms aren’t always a sign that something’s wrong with your body.
Sometimes, they’re a sign your body’s been trying to protect you for far too long.

So what if your chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and food reactivity weren’t your body failing you—
but your body finally saying:
“I can’t keep surviving like this.”

That’s the lens Faith Ashenden invites us to see healing through.

 

From Biohacks to Burnout: When “Optimizing” Doesn’t Heal You

It’s easy to believe we just need to do more. Another test. Another restriction. Another tool.
But as Faith shares in our conversation, most people jump to optimizing before their system even feels safe.

“Let’s not introduce the shock factor while your nervous system is already in shock.”

This line landed like a lightning bolt. Because how many of us—especially women—are walking around in full-blown survival mode, trying to fix the symptoms of burnout with more pressure?

If you’ve been told to cold plunge your way out of chronic fatigue or biohack your chronic pain into submission, and it hasn’t worked—you’re not alone.
And more importantly: you’re not broken.

You might just be in desperate need of a nervous system reset.

 

What’s Really Behind Chronic Illness?

Faith’s own journey spans over a decade of mystery illness, flare-ups, and frustration.
She tried it all—Western medicine, integrative care, biohacking. But nothing lasted until she started working with what she now calls “the deeper mind.”

This is where real chronic illness recovery begins.

It’s not about pushing harder. It’s about rewiring the identity that’s been built around your symptoms.

“You don’t heal in opposition to your identity.”

Let that sit for a second.

Because for so many people dealing with chronic conditions, a diagnosis becomes part of how they define themselves.
“I have chronic fatigue.”
“I can’t eat that.”
“I’m always in pain.”
These aren’t just statements. They’re beliefs. And beliefs are powerful.

Your identity shapes your biology. If your nervous system believes you’re in danger—physically, emotionally, or even socially—it will do everything in its power to protect you. Even if that means flaring up when you eat gluten. Or tanking your energy when you try to rest.

This is where Faith’s work gets radically different:
She doesn’t just teach protocols. She teaches re-patterning the subconscious so your body stops seeing the world as a threat.

 

Why Your Nervous System Needs Safety to Heal

We’ve normalized the warning signs. The brain fog. The irritability. The gut issues. The cycle of wired-but-tired.
We call it “just being in your thirties.”
We call it “normal stress.”
We joke about it on social media.

But Faith calls it what it really is: chronic dysregulation. And it’s costing us more than energy—it’s costing us trust in our own bodies.

“At the root of every chronic symptom is a lack of safety somewhere in the nervous system.”

This is why her work focuses on what she calls a nervous system reset—rebuilding the inner trust between body and mind.
When the nervous system stops feeling like it’s under siege, healing becomes possible again.
Not because the symptoms instantly vanish, but because you’re no longer at war with yourself.

And when you stop fighting your body, you start listening to it.

 

Food Reactivity Is Not Always About the Food

One of the most mind-expanding parts of our conversation was about food reactivity and the stories we create around it.

Faith explains that food intolerances, in many cases, aren’t just physical—they’re deeply emotional and neurological. The body creates an association with danger based on past experiences, even if the original threat is long gone.

“Your beliefs shape your biology—and your symptoms follow.”

That doesn’t mean it’s “all in your head.” It means your brain and body are brilliant—and sometimes overly protective.

Faith has helped people go from eating five “safe” foods to reintroducing dozens simply by shifting the belief and trauma patterns tied to those foods.
No intense detox. No crazy protocol. Just subconscious safety work.

It’s not magic. It’s holistic health—done differently.

 

Chronic Pain Healing Starts with Tiny, Unsexy Steps (and That’s a Good Thing)

If you’re nodding along and thinking, “Okay, I want to heal—but where do I start?”

Start small. Ridiculously small.

“Five minutes is great. That’s enough to shift your chemistry.”

That’s the truth we often forget. Healing isn’t a 30-day reset. It’s a relationship.
A slow, sweet rebuilding of trust between your nervous system and your sense of self.
It’s the Pilates session you do for five minutes and call it a win.
It’s ordering the matcha and believing it’s going to help.
It’s waking up one morning and saying, “I’m becoming someone who feels good in her body,” and then living into that, one breath at a time.

 

So, Where Do You Go From Here with a Nervous System Reset?

You might not need another test.
You might not need to cut out another food group.
You might just need to change the way you see yourself.

This episode with Faith Ashenden is a reminder that chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and chronic illness recovery don’t begin with perfection.
They begin with permission—to feel, to shift, to slow down, to believe again.

They begin with the moment you stop asking, “What’s wrong with me?” and start asking, “What is my body trying to say?”

 

Listen to the Full Conversation

This was one of those episodes that stays with you long after it ends.
If you’ve ever felt dismissed, unsupported, or stuck in cycles of unexplained symptoms—Faith Ashenden’s story will crack something open in you.

 

 

 

Full Transcript on Chronic Pain and Holistic Health with Faith Ashenden

 

Chardét (00:00)
Last year, I came down with a chronic illness that I couldn’t figure out. And I felt like it was going to be my life forever. It was isolating. It was struggling. It was difficult. And I wish that I had heard the conversation that you are going to hear today because this is all about the deeper mind and how we add meaning to the different things we’re experiencing that can often exacerbate and

create problems for us. Everything from chronic symptoms to food intolerances, these things have a deeper source and that is what we are exploring in this really incredible conversation that is going to make you think. It’s with the founder of that healing feeling, Faith Ashenden, and she has worked with women around the world to help them heal their deeper chronic.

symptoms. She also did this herself so she’s very much someone who has walked that journey and come out the other side.

Get ready to feel good naked. I’m your host, Sade, and if you’re here right now, means that you are ready to strip away all the crap, all the rules holding you back from feeling good in your body, in your mind, and in your life. Let’s get into it.

Faith Ashenden (01:23)
Everything that I do at that healing feeling is about empowering women to become their own healers. As women, you know, we’re so intuitive and for so many reasons, we have suppressed our wisdom and it’s about coming back to that and especially in a day and age where there’s so much noise, there’s so much stimulation and women are chronically burnt out dealing with all of these so-called unexplained symptoms. It’s how can you now take your power back?

Chardét (01:53)
forcing us to unlearn so much because I think as women we’re taught that our body is the enemy. You know, when you first get your period, for example, you’re like, my horrible period, now I can’t go do things. You don’t really learn how much of the answers is inside of you. You’re really taught to look externally for healing for everything else. So that resonates a lot to say that you’re helping guide people to find the answers within themselves.

Faith Ashenden (02:17)
And I think even especially because I work with people with chronic symptoms, you subconsciously become almost at war with yourself because mentally you want, you know, to feel good and you’re doing all these things and then you think, why, why, why can’t you give me a break? Why can’t I feel better? And so you inherently become at war with yourself and any relationship you can’t heal when you’re at war.

as with any relationship starts with trust and so trusting yourself and that’s why it all kind of comes back to can you listen more and how can you build that relationship between the mind and the body and it is leaning a lot into that like female energy if you will.

Chardét (02:53)
How

do you see health optimization? How does that relate back to what you’re doing?

Faith Ashenden (02:58)
So it is funny because like the biohacking world got me into this, but I was in the Western medicine model when I was chronically ill myself trying to navigate what’s going on, why do I feel this way? And when I didn’t get answers, I went down the functional integrative base, which was hugely helpful for me. Then I sort of got into, okay, what about…

the nervous system. So to me, it’s just the next level. And to me, like I consider it the root cause when you’re living in fight or flight or living in survival, your body is not going to detox. It doesn’t care. Let’s start at the basics. Then you optimize. But unfortunately, in the wellness community, people are really stick and they go straight to optimization. I’m like you, you’re you’re not even like moving your body and drinking water. You know, it’s like, let’s, you know, so I mean, that’s my experience having

been in this world having been chronically ill and like working in the industry.

Chardét (03:51)
You said it so perfectly that everyone’s searching to heal through optimization instead of doing the layer beneath that, which sounds like it’s a lot of your work. If I’m chronically stressed and I’m not sleeping and the source of my stress is there and I go do some cold plunges, I’m not really going to get better.

Faith Ashenden (04:08)
let’s not introduce the shock factor while your nervous system is already in shock.

Chardét (04:13)
completely fair. What are some of the symptoms that you notice? Because I think it’s interesting, you probably work with a big spectrum of women from people who have maybe been chronically ill for even decades and they recognize it, they see these things that are impairing their life. And then there’s probably people who maybe can’t recognize that this is the problem. They just feel fatigued or I don’t know. So I’m curious, like what are some of the overt symptoms when your nervous system is really overly taxed?

And then maybe what are the more subtle ones that you see where people just don’t know and then it builds up and they’re like, I don’t understand what’s happening, Faith.

Faith Ashenden (04:47)
help

me. Chronic illness, like a diagnosis of some sort is that is where your body is like, all right, I’ve hit the breaking point. So that’s where I was. And I was so young when that started for me at 21. I wasn’t thinking about how’s my lifestyle. But you know, I have a lot of people coming to me and it’s like, I can’t work, I’m bedridden. That’s where I was at. So that’s that end of the spectrum. And then there’s the other end where a lot of people are at, which is exhausted, anxious, gut issues of

various kinds, low motivation, lack of joy, lack of interest, wired but tired, not sleeping well, not hungry in the morning, irregular cycles. So either painful cycles or not bleeding, you know, just anywhere on that spectrum. So these are all signs that obviously there’s some sort of imbalance. And I think unfortunately as well being right where I am.

in my early thirties having two small children and I see on like the mom side of social media, it’s very normalized. Don’t get me wrong. Like it’s rough. And you know, when you have a baby, you don’t sleep, you know, that was hard, but we just accept these symptoms of hypervigilance and we’re like, that’s what happens. And there are all these like memes of being in your thirties and how like everything hurts. And that’s the way it’s supposed to be because you’re 30 and I’m thinking, mm.

That kind of narrative is in, it shows like where we’re at as a society and the problem is that people aren’t really seeing it. There are solutions.

Chardét (06:15)
The mom one in particular is interesting because that really highlights how normalized some of the symptoms we have, especially in that context where you’re like, of course it’s high stress, you’re going to have fatigue, et cetera, and low motivation. But it’s interesting too, because even what you’re saying about the age thing, I’ve seen the memes in the videos where they’re having a conversation and they’re over 30 and everyone’s complaining about back pain. just like, well, I don’t feel.

back pain and I’m almost 40s. I don’t know how normal that is, but we accept it as such.

Faith Ashenden (06:45)
It feels too basic because you’re in the wellness world, but like I promise you the small things move the needle.

Chardét (06:50)
When you talk about like your work specifically, is it the combination of neurohacking along with the linguistic devices? Like how do you categorize the tools that you’re using just for listeners to understand a bit more if they haven’t been familiar with you?

Faith Ashenden (07:05)
When I was looking for how to heal myself, I started in just learning about neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to change. And so when we look at updates in pain science and the research that’s been done there, we know that when a condition is chronic, that we actually can change the way that we perceive that sensation by changing our brain because the brain can change at any time. So I started with the science. That was my background from university. I was able to…

hack things like food intolerances, those things you can train your brain to kind of like receive the sensation differently. And I thought that was so cool because I was like, my God, there’s this superpower. So now I’m going to start like a brain training business. The business evolved because I started to get into these situations of like deep rooted trauma, identity work. And that is where I started diving into more of the like less scientific stuff and more.

If you think about the world of like Joe Dispenza, kind of a lot of people are familiar with him, but looking into like neuro-linguistic programming, rapid resolution therapy, which is one of my favorites, it’s just working with your deeper mind versus your conscious mind, hypnosis, and a lot of certifications and trauma work from the subconscious standpoint. I was fascinated with this concept that you could help people release these memories, this trauma without actually reliving it. I personally had tried talk therapy and I found it to be

made me sicker having to talk about it. When I had to sit and rehash these experiences, I would have like these physical reactions. And logically, I knew that it wasn’t the best thing for me, but this is how you heal. You go through, you talk about it and you re-feel it. And the more painful it is, better. And there’s a different way of thinking and you can work, you know.

in deeper mind, not with their conscious mind to release time stamped memories and they’re often associated with symptoms. And so I started to learn that and get those certifications and totally, I would say changed my approach now to where it’s only about 15 to 20 % brain training and the rest is deeper mind work. I’m obsessed with it because I think, you know, 95 % of our mind is our deeper mind. So everything that moves the needle, everything that controls everything that we do for the most part.

is deeply encoded in a place where we aren’t actually aware of what’s going on unless we do this work to bring it to the surface. And for me, it’s the results much faster, right? Like it can take ages to talk about something. It can take 15 minutes to shift something if you’re working with your deeper mind. And so that’s where my injured sort of exploded. And then I created the majority of my content, what I do with clients around that.

And so when someone comes to me saying, I have like, you know, this dairy intolerance, I’m like, that’s easy. There’s always something deeper and that’s exciting because it’s something you’ve been trying to do for 15 years and we’re going to do it in a few weeks.

Chardét (09:56)
This is so fascinating because I feel like we don’t even really have a framework around it because it is a niche collection of different things that you have put together and techniques. What would be an example, for instance, if you mentioned the dairy intolerance, what could possibly be underneath that? Because that’s definitely not something that I would think, ⁓ if we go into deeper mind, we can sort of see why this is being triggered, but it does make sense. So I’m just curious, what have you seen?

recognizing probably a lot of people are different.

Faith Ashenden (10:27)
I do always like to clarify that I work with intolerances, not allergies. So I wouldn’t say, yeah, like if you are with like celiac or you have like an actual dairy allergy, no, like we wouldn’t even accept you into the program or we would accept you and say, but we’re not working on that symptom, right? So for safety reasons, there’s a process and a protocol, but yeah, we work with tons of food intolerances. That’s kind of like our bread and butter, that and chronic pain. Anything like dairy or gluten or something like a food, that’s usually just like…

a series of beliefs that were formed from like the trauma around that food. You’ve had experiences, you’ve eaten this stuff, you’ve had these bad reactions for whatever reason at the time was a problem. And you created this belief and a series of beliefs that have a negative association with dairy and whatever else. Usually it’s a lot of things by the time they get to me, like I have clients who eat five foods, right? Cause they’ve been told you cannot eat this and this and this and this, and then their reactions get worse and worse. So then you believe now you’ve associated subconsciously with danger.

This is a danger food, so the nervous system is going to respond faster, harder every single time you eat it. So usually you can train a different response, but also it’s getting to the core of your beliefs around that and your identity around that, which live in your subconscious. Because as long as you believe something, your beliefs are going to control your perception of reality. So even if you train yourself to no longer feel the sensation, you can, and it’ll work, but the belief will rear its ugly head in another area of your life. And so this is why people don’t have

results that long lasting and they have a trigger at some point and they’re like now I’m back to square one and I have all this anxiety and it’s like at the core at the root there is a lack of safety somewhere and where there’s lack of safety there’s dis-ease right and so you’re gonna have these symptoms and so the nervous system needs safety it needs safety in order for you to be in homeostasis and so we need to get to the core of why are you feeling unsafe it’s very easy with food intolerances because you’ve had these unsafe

experiences and you’ve been told that this is bad for you. You’ve taken a million tests, you’ve talked to a million people with different opinions who seem to be in positions of authority telling you that something is dangerous. That’s black and white. Like you are going to think that is dangerous now. It’s not an easy task to change your belief about something.

Chardét (12:42)
Yeah, it’s not enough to just say, do not have this intolerance to dairy. When you were saying that, I was thinking about how interesting it is because I know quite a few people and I’m sure everyone listening as well who they either experienced this or know people who have these intolerances that develop later in life. And when I think about them, especially the people I know a little bit deeper, it happened, it coincided with a really traumatic event or news or something in their lives.

Faith Ashenden (12:46)
Wish!

Chardét (13:11)
And I can just see how maybe their body was already reacting to that. And then they went and had the food and then they created that relationship between the two. And it’s wild then because you feel like all these dieticians telling people to continue to not have the food and they’re never going into this deeper problem, the deeper connection.

Faith Ashenden (13:31)
Yeah, I mean, it’s all about the meaning that you create. People need to let go of the idea that meaning is real. For example, like in that scenario, you described someone created meaning, right? So I’ve had this bad reaction. It must be this. Meaning. Our brains are meaning making machines. We have to make sense of things or else we would just be taking in data without, you know, context. And so we think that the meaning we’ve created is what actually happened. That’s like how we live our lives.

And that’s how we form beliefs. And so when we let go and we become detached from the idea that anything we believe is actually true, it’s not, it’s the meaning we’ve created. That’s when we can easily change meaning. We can change beliefs, we can change our own identity. We can play around with our reality. But so many people are so, so attached to this idea, no, this is the way it is. The key to unlocking everything is accepting that the meaning you created is nothing more than

biochemistry and it’s like, it’s not what actually happened. We do this exercise with my clients. We experiment with just giving meaning to things. So they’ll ask me, Faith, how do you interpret it? And I say, what do you think would be the most useful way to interpret this in the situation you’re in now? And so they give me, this is the most useful way I could interpret the situation and say, okay, great, let’s make that the meaning. Why not give it the most useful meaning and see how that changes the way that your nervous system reacts.

And this is why, you know, it doesn’t work in every situation, but just in my niche, which is chronic symptoms that have developed at some point in your life that Western medicine has not been able to support you with. In that situation, this kind of vantage point is very, useful.

Chardét (15:10)
What was some of the, to understand a bit more for your journey, what were some of the deeper meanings that you were creating that you realized through the work you’ve done? Were the stories or were holding you back or were prolonging the chronic illness and symptoms you were experiencing?

Faith Ashenden (15:26)
First and foremost, identifying as chronically ill, that was deeply my identity. I actually started my Instagram when I left my job because I was so sick and I was just really alone. And none of my friends understood what it was like to be chronically ill and sick and whatever. And so I started my Instagram and my whole identity was like this chronic illness person sharing my life. And then I realized in doing this work, as long as I identify as something, I will never heal.

because you don’t heal in opposition to your identity. Your identity is essentially the captain of the ship when it comes to deeper mind and it deletes, distorts and generalizes all of your reality based on your identity. And so this is a huge thing for people and this applies to any area of your life. People talk about manifesting. Well, how do you manifest? You change your identity because your brain deletes, distorts and generalizes anything that lives in opposition to your identity. So if you say, I want to be a millionaire,

Well, you just say, I’m a millionaire and you see everything through the lens of a millionaire. And guess what? You act like one, you think like one, you have those habits because it’s your identity. And so for chronic illness for me and for everyone, I feel like that big barrier is I’m chronically ill. And so it is. And then I decided one day, no, I want to be healthy. So actually I’m healing to the version of me, which is healthy. And that little shift opened the door.

for all these other beliefs that were attached to, because your beliefs form your identity, and everything started shifting for me. When you’re able to do something like that, it really is a quantum leap. For me, it was three months where I was a completely different person, being able to do that, having been sick, really sick for a total of 10 years, in and out of school, in and out of jobs, with no real solutions. mean…

Chardét (17:09)
so long, right? The 10 years and I’m sure there’s people listening to that have also gone that long or maybe longer or their moms are doing it or their fathers or whoever and it feels like that’s just the way it is. They’ve always had this pain in their hands and their joints. They always had this, it’s just gonna be how it is and

It’s when you say it, it’s like, of course, if you believe that you have that you’re chronically ill, then you’re going to delete any extra information that could help you to not be. You’re not going to notice other things. You’re not going to hear this conversation openly and seek more information because you’ve already said, nope, that’s not something that can work. I think that’s so powerful for everything. Was there a specific couple of moments or something that allowed you to say, it’s my identity? Like, this is what I need to work on. Or was it kind of more of a gradual?

process.

Faith Ashenden (17:56)
Well, it’s interesting because I was posting on social as this chronic illness hub almost like I had grown to like 15,000 followers of chronically ill people who were all kind of in the same boat we were sharing about the struggles of this and Then I had this thought of like I want to shift my identity. This is this is holding me back but then literal online presence is

chronic illness. That is what I’m known for. And everyone’s gonna hate me because I’m gonna go on saying, I can heal and they’re all gonna be like, isn’t this a place where we go and talk about how much it sucks to be chronic? You know, like they don’t want to. And so it was the day that I changed my Instagram that I decided, you know, okay, my account is no longer gonna be this like chronic illness account. It’s gonna be about brain training and healing. And I’m gonna be posting about that stuff instead. And I’m gonna notice the things that feel good.

And so I booked the coffee and I went to macho with a friend and I didn’t like not book it because I was going to have a flare and I took the medicine and I said, this is going to help me, you know, and like this stuff, it’s going to work and I’m going to go do the Pilates and it’s going to suck and I’m going to do five minutes. But actually five minutes is great. And I’m a Pilates princess now. So we’re doing it, you know, and I just did the things, even if it was just a little, because it was something and I stepped into that identity. I am this now I am doing this. It just had this like compounding effect. My brain was

being forced to notice what I wanted instead of what I didn’t want. Reality is duality. It’s what you like and what you don’t like. And it was so used to looking at the what I don’t like that it was missing the opportunity of what I do like and what’s going well. And so I trained it and that was setting off this chemical reaction within my body. It was flooding my body with these neurotransmitters that say, hey, life is good. We’re safe. We’re abundant. And that’s when my body was like, okay, now we can start to heal.

And so I was really becoming my own healer. was like, enough is enough. I don’t want to do this anymore. But you have to believe or else you’re bullshitting yourself. You’re looking and saying, I’m a Pilates princess, but you know you’re not, you know, so you’ve got to believe.

Chardét (19:57)
This is where it’s, well, the two points that really stick out here. The one is that you, you did the things that you, the habits you saw of the identity you wanted, but you didn’t worry about doing them a hundred percent because I think that’s where it really throws people away. If you say, for example, I’m going to be a runner, I’m scheduled to run tomorrow, my first jog or something, and I get five minutes into it. I’m like, Nope, can’t do it.

And I feel like, well, okay, well, I’m not a runner then, I guess. I wasn’t able to do the 30 minutes I had planned. So you never build on it. And I love that you said I did five minutes of the Pilates. I knew it was going to suck, but it’s fine. Now I’m the Pilates princess because it keeps building and scaling up. That’s how growth happens. It’s not just one day you can do a hundred percent of something you’ve stopped doing.

Faith Ashenden (20:43)
I mean, it’s so funny as well because I work with such intelligent women. mean, like my students are always extreme high achievers, you know, and they come to me and they’ll say, oh, you know, I did it and I failed. What learning is, like we go back to the example of like a child learning to walk because I have two small children. I can see how many times they fall over. Instinct is to stand back up. It’s a human instinct. So we’ve learned, created meaning somehow that falling down is failure.

And again, everything comes back to all of these beliefs that are holding us back. The brain doesn’t understand, like I did it for a long time or I did it for a short amount of time. Subconsciously, there’s only now. And so there’s no past and present or like increments of time. And so I did it, it subconsciously is the same for an hour or 30 seconds. So why not feel the feeling of doing it, which is gonna have that cascade effect hormonally within the body of this is abundant and this is safe. And so we get to decide

Chardét (21:39)
It’s that construction of time, I feel like it just throws us so much with everything of I should be doing it for this long, I should have been healed by now, I’ve been suffering for this long. All this time construction is really interesting when you say like your body doesn’t know the difference, like your body’s not keeping time. And we put it so much in our heads just because that’s the way that we measure the external world, even though it’s in conflict with actually what your internal world is like.

Faith Ashenden (22:06)
If you

think about the subconscious mind, like I am is the needle mover. Anything that follows I am is the mind follows, right? And so that’s where we talk about identity. But the nervous system, the deeper mind doesn’t understand what the conscious mind quantifies. And so we torture ourselves. When we think about the past, our nervous system thinks it’s happening now. When we think about the future, anxiety, our nervous system thinks it’s happening now.

And we’re torturing ourselves over and over and our poor bodies are like living through this trauma of like something that doesn’t even exist. And so it’s important to understand that our conscious mind and our like deeper mind, they live in opposition in many ways. One has evolved really, really, really quickly and the other one is operating in a totally different way. And so we need to bridge that gap with this kind of understanding.

Chardét (22:55)
Because what you’re saying to this gives a lot more context, I think, and even just the scientific background a bit more for how everyone’s always saying like for true health live in the present now. And it makes sense because in the present now, I’m not being stressed by past things and I’m not being stressed about anxiety or uncertainty about what could happen or what will happen or what I think will happen. I’m just in this moment right now and I have complete agency for what’s happening in this second. And that’s a lot.

safer than like, my God, what could happen here? And then what if they say this? And then what if it’s just the mind can create so much stress for you if you

Faith Ashenden (23:33)
Especially with women because like, you know, we’re like biologically designed, you know, we multitask and we were like the caregivers of the children. And so I always have part of my mind on my kids. Like it would be impossible to not be split since I became a mother, you know, and so there is this appreciation for like what our brains can do and then simultaneously the understanding of like how to manage that.

the constant worry of everything all the time and the to-do lists and the tabs and the way that we’re wired as women and knowing that in the present you can’t experience anxiety because anxiety is the fear of an unwanted future. So it’s not the fear of an unwanted present. In the present, it physically cannot exist. And so to heal anxiety, if you had to put it down to one simple thing, I like simple, it’s be in the present. That’s coming back to your body.

because your body doesn’t know past and future. So it’s coming back into yourself. You have, like you said, you have to unlearn and you’ve got to tune out the noise.

Chardét (24:30)
It’s when you’re saying this, I’m just thinking for final question for you and I recognize in asking you this, it’s a really big question and probably for people to get a full answer, they’re going to need to follow you to get to really know deeper than this. But we’ll see at least if we can get a couple minutes answer for it. Cause we’ve spoken so much about what it’s like when you’re not in a regulated nervous system, when you, how you react to things, when you create meanings. What would be an example of.

of someone who has a regulated balanced nervous system reacting to some sort of trauma, uncertainty or unexpected thing. Like what would that feel like or look like for someone? Because I think a lot of us, we don’t even know what that other side is like.

Faith Ashenden (25:17)
think that there’s preconceived notion that being regulated means you never like experience the full spectrum of human emotion. Like you don’t have fear, anxiety or anger, but that’s not true. Being regulated, it’s like a wave. So, you know, you can go from parasympathetic to sympathetic. So fight or flight to rest and digest. And so learn how to come back down, how to down regulate, come back to rest and digest, which is essentially what

I’m trying to teach, then what it means is in the future when you do have an unexpected event, which will happen, you will face it without the fear. So like you experience whatever the appropriate emotion is. And after you feel that and you have a way to come back down to a down regulated state, but I think a couple of things tend to happen. either

kind of don’t feel it and you suck it up because you’re scared to feel it and that then you’re holding that within yourself. It needs to be released or you feel it and then you can’t come back down. You’re stuck in this fight or flight, which is a normal response if it’s a traumatic situation. But at some point you have to come back down because no organism in nature can survive the side effects of long-term stress. We break down. We weren’t designed that way. We have learned to become scared because we get stuck. So that’s…

normal. Like I see it all the time and we do the best we can with what we have.

Chardét (26:41)
Try not getting stuck or not suppressing essentially. Like you still have the same experience, but your response eventually is more, is healthier for your organism. For people though, who are thinking, I want to learn a little bit more, especially listeners that are experiencing chronic illness, chronic symptoms. How can they connect with you? What are the ways also that you work with people?

Faith Ashenden (27:07)
So they can find me on Instagram at that healing feeling or my website faithashenden.com. We’ve really this year been going into like niche categories, you know, things to focus on. We have a ton of courses based on your symptoms. If you connect with me, you can find the whole range of support.

Chardét (27:23)
We’ll include links, of course, and the show notes. And thank you for being here. I think there were definitely some aha moments throughout, but I really appreciate you sharing it. And thank you so much for listening. Now, Faith has given us an amazing gift here. So if you’ve been listening and you’ve been thinking, really could use her expertise, her approach to help me, she has a program called the Recovery Formula. This is one of her.

Faith Ashenden (27:32)
so much for having me it was fun.

Chardét (27:50)
biggest ones that people find such big transformations. And usually it is $147, but she is giving 50 % off to all listeners for a limited time. So there is a link in the show notes where you can find the recovery formula. You could also just search Faith, the recovery formula and the code you’re going to use is feelgood.

Again, if any of what she said has resonated with you, I highly recommend this because she’s worked with so many people in groups and one-to-one to bring this knowledge to you. It’s a very different way to heal from any different chronic issues that you’ve been facing, some gut issues, all of these different things that maybe can have another way if we just learn a little bit more about how to heal. So again, if you want to join the recovery formula or you just want to check it out, go to the show notes.

code is feelgood all as one word and you get 50 % off that program. Thank you so much for listening. Please share this with anyone that you think would benefit and I will see you in the next one.