Episode 424: Your Default Mode Network, Your Identity & the Story Keeping You Sick
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
It’s no secret that stepping out of your typical day-to-day routine can be so expansive and help you realize how much possibility exists. It’s one thing to have the breakthrough, but it’s another thing entirely to bring that expanded identity back into your actual life, schedule, relationships, and nervous system.
In this episode, Erin talks about “default mode” and how the story you tell yourself about yourself can become the identity you keep living from.
This is a conversation about identity, healing, nervous system safety, parts integration, and the hardwired stories we keep reenacting without realizing it. Erin also shares a snippet from Manifest Your Health on rewriting your inner narrative, because action is what crystallizes change.
In this episode:
How big clarity can drop in on vacation, retreat, or in a pattern interrupt, and then disappear when you return to real life
The one question Erin asks herself every time when anchoring into a new identity
How the brain uses old memories, beliefs, and predictions to keep recreating the same reality
Why new experiences, new choices, and new inputs help your brain create a different default
Resources mentioned:
Applications for the Fall 2026 cohort of The Funk’tional Nutrition Academy are now open! If you’re ready to become a certified functional health practitioner, apply now.
Manifest Your Health is our neuroscience backed membership designed to help you reconnect with your body, regulate your nervous system, and finally break out of the symptom loop.
Subscribe to her Substack where Erin shares the (raw & unfiltered) BTS of her own business & life – so you can steal what applies to yours. All things health, wealth, ambition & manifestation
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We live our lives in protest to what's possible. We choose to reenact the past, to reenact what happened to us. Hippocrates says, before you heal someone, ask him if he's willing to give up the thing that made him sick.
Welcome to the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast, spelled with a K, because we do things a little differently around here. I'm your host, Erin Holt, and I've got 15 years of clinical experience as a functional nutritionist and mindset coach, creating a new model that I call Intuitive Functional Medicine™, where we combine root cause medicine with the innate intelligence of your body. This is where science meets self-trust. Your body already knows how to heal, and this show is going to show you how. If you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health, be sure to follow and share with a friend because you never know whose life you might change.
Hello, my friends, my cool cats and kittens. So I had a totally separate podcast planned for today. I even teased it out in a previous episode.
Whoops.
And It was going to be called My Summer Upgrade. So in July, I stepped away from my typical routine, my typical schedule. I was out of the day-to-day operations of my business for the entire month. We were up at our lake house in Maine. I was on a very different schedule. And I've talked about this before. I am such a fan of interrupting the pattern of your day-to-day life and stepping out of your regularly scheduled program. And it might not be an entire vacation in Maine for a whole month.
It might just be a day out of the office, Or a day out of your typical routine. But either way, stepping out of your typical day-to-day routine can be so expansive because when you break away from what is familiar, you start to realize how much possibility exists beyond what you are seeing when you're heads down in your typical day-to-day routine in life. And if we're trying to call in the next version of ourselves, If you're here, probably you're doing some iteration of that, whether it's with health or something else. When we're trying to call in that next version, it often requires us to break free of what is familiar. And so pattern interrupting your schedule can be super helpful for you to do this. And literally on a brain-based level, it helps you break out of your DMN, which is your default mode network. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna get into today what the DMN is, what it does, and what it can prevent you from doing too.
And so when I did this, I saw saw some really big expansion happen in myself in July. Big clarity on next steps. I had been really kind of confused about what I wanted to do, like what I actually genuinely wanted and desires, and big clarity dropped in, really owning my desires, like some pretty exciting stuff. And so I was all hot to trot. I was all ready to come back and record my summer upgrade for you and tell you all about it. I even started planning the episode back in July. I'm like, I gotta tell them about this. This is great.
And then I got back into my day-to-day routine, my day-to-day life.
And I said, oh, I do not think I'm ready to record this. So it's like I broke out of my DMN, my default mode.
I got to see what was possible, got a little taste of that. And now I'm back and I have to act out that new identity, that new expanded identity. This is where the rubber meets the road.
This is the real work.
And it can feel really Challenging. So when you pattern interrupt, when you step out of your day-to-day, when you disrupt the DMN, you are able to see and hear and receive the messages from your true highest self. This is how I see it. So the DMN, the default mode, is like the me network, and it is the story that you tell yourself about yourself. So when you disrupt this, you're able to see beyond that story that you're telling yourself. And The way I think about our true authentic self is that it is the person that you came here to be, the person that you really are at your core before the world told you who you had to be, who you had to be to survive, to belong, to be loved, to be liked, before the conditions of worth were placed on you, before you picked up limiting ideas or constructs and started living by these limiting ideas as though they were absolute truth, before you You created the story of who you are in your head and started living by that story as though it were absolute truth. And I think so much of healing is peeling back the layers of who we were conditioned to be in order to reveal who we actually are. I've been talking a lot about perimenopause lately, and honestly, this is essentially the initiation of perimenopause and menopause is exactly this, peeling back the layers to reveal Your true authentic self.
This is truly who I am. So anyway, when we step out of our day-to-day routine, when we pattern interrupt, when we disrupt the DMN, either with a vacation or a plant medicine journey, we are able to see beyond the story. And that creates this feeling of like, oh my God, anything is possible. I can really do this. I can expand beyond my current reality. But then when we step back into our day-to-day, we're essentially bringing all that new awareness, that new consciousness, that new identity, that new expanded self. Into the old operations. And it can feel really difficult because you are essentially trying to operate in an old framework as a new expanded version of yourself.
And your nervous system is kind of like, what the fuck? What is happening? This is not familiar. This is not safe. And what I've seen both in myself, but also in countless others, is that what we actually need in order to solidify this, in order to anchor this in, in order to integrate all of this, is that we actually need to integrate our protector parts. So we have our true authentic self, our highest expression of ourselves, like our true capital S Self. But then we have all of these parts of ourselves that have split off or fragmented off. And IFS Internal Family Systems calls this protector parts. So protector parts is a term or a concept from IFS, but this idea really transcends a lot of different disciplines and methodologies. So I approach this in a way that I learned through my somatic IFS training, but also in ways that overlap with what I learned back in 2018 in a certification based in noetic sciences.
Also, it overlaps with a lot of what I learned through my compassion training through Stanford. Same deal with my NLP training. So again, there's this one concept of protector parts, but this idea, this concept really shows up in a lot of places and spaces. And I get a lot more into all of this in Manifest Your Health, my program. But you can think about these parts as inner children or limiting beliefs, and they ramp up when they think they have to keep you safe. They are parts of us that are trying to protect us from experiencing pain or shame or fear or rejection. That we have felt at some point during our life. So we went through an experience, we felt fear, shame, pain, some type of discomfort, and your nervous system really clocked that and was like, nah, we're never going to do that again.
So these parts fragment off and their main job is to keep you from experiencing that pain or that lack of safety again. And so as you bring your new identity forward, these parts might be telling you no. It's actually not safe to be expressed here. Remember when we tried to be expressed here that one time and then this thing happened? We're not going to let you do that again. It's actually not safe to wear this identity here. And so that's why it can feel so challenging. And that's why so many people can have this big inspiration or these big aha moments. Again, whether that's on a vacation or it's on a retreat, or it's even just listening to a podcast, or it's in some type of plant medicine journey, you can disrupt your DMN.
You can break through the limiting stories and limiting ideas of what you're telling yourself about yourself and what's possible for yourself. You can see beyond, like, limitless possibilities, and then you get back into your life and that inspiration sort of just like poof dissolves. It's because we have to anchor in the new identity by taking action steps as the new identity. And the reason that we're not taking action steps as the new identity is because we have these protector parts that are saying it's actually not safe to take that action step. It's actually not safe to move forward in that way. The nervous system is saying it's actually not safe to be witnessed and to be seen in this way. It's not safe to communicate in this way. So that is so much a part of this work, and we really have to reckon with that part.
We can't bypass these parts, and it's so much of what I've been doing personally All through August. So it's like I had this big epiphany in July. I'm like, can't wait to tell the gang about this. And then I was like, fuck, in August, I'm like, this is really where the rubber meets the road. I have to do all of this parts integration. And for those of you guys who are in Manifest Your Health with me, those of you guys who are in the app, I am using all of the tools from Phase 4 to do this, just as an FYI. But anyway, back to the DMN. Remember, we don't see reality as it is.
We see reality based on what we are available to see. And if you are like, what are you talking about? I explain this concept a bunch on the podcast, but the most recent one would be The Neuroscience of Reality. So go listen to that show if you're kind of curious about what I'm talking about here. But here's the Cliff Notes. Your brain doesn't just passively receive information. It filters and interprets it based on your predictions. The brain is a prediction-making machine and it makes predictions. Mm-hmm.
Based on your past and also your current beliefs. But those current beliefs are more often than not installed and informed by your past. So our DMN can be a set point for how we see ourselves and therefore can limit how we grow and how we evolve. Our DMN is the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves. And if we want something different, if we wanna call in a new reality, if we wanna have a new experience in our life, whether that is with our health or with our career or with our relationships, with anything, we have to start telling ourselves a new story, and then we have to start living by that new story. I love this quote from Derek Sivers. He says, the distance between deciding and doing is the single most reliable predictor of whether your life will be extraordinary or ordinary. So we have to make a decision.
We have to set an intention. We have to decide and declare what do we want, and then we have to go, Do that thing. We have to act as the person that has that identity already. I want to anchor in that concept with real-world stuff, so I'm going to share a story with you from somebody in Manifest Your Health right now. She said— so YHR, by the way, is my hormone program that I used to run, Your Hormone Revival. And she said, when I did YHR back in 2022, I had been in Bad place mentally and physically. That work brought me into a restorative place that shifted so much in a positive way. I continued those practices for years with notable improvements, though in the last year I've noticed a new default.
Da da da da, default mode. A new default or comfort level with going inward, stuck in restoring mode, that going outward has felt scary. Because of this, I have turned down many social opportunities, especially when they land on a weeknight. I have reflected on how small my world has become. My win this week is saying yes to a Wednesday night concert with a couple new friends. This is my evidence that I can be social, which can fill up my cup in new ways and also feel balanced. So without context, This action of going to a Wednesday night concert might seem like such a small thing, like such a small step, but listen to me when I tell you that this is everything. This is her acting as her new, more expanded self.
This is her overcoming the limiting beliefs, the limiting ideas, the nervous system freak out in the protector part saying it's actually not safe to do that. And for her to anchor into the new identity by saying, I'm gonna show myself that this is safe by saying yes. And doing it. This is her building the world she wants to live in. She doesn't want to stay at home and feel her world getting smaller and smaller and smaller anymore. But her nervous system has convinced her that that is what feels safe. That is what is familiar. Her nervous system says, this is the environment in which I healed.
So this is the environment in which I have to remain if I want to stay healed and to stay safe. But here's what's so real, you guys. We can't just tell ourselves we want a new reality. We have to Actively build it, and we build it by living it. So this is step one. This is how we go from, I want to be somebody who does this, to, I am somebody who does this. This step that she is taking is literally changing her DMN. She's starting to write a new story of, I am somebody who can actually do this.
I am somebody who does this. And with this step forward, she's starting to create a new set of beliefs for herself, and she's beginning to operate from a new set of beliefs. New identity and create a new reality for herself. Like I said earlier, if we're trying to call in the next version of ourselves, it almost always requires us to break free of what's familiar. And that includes limiting beliefs, fears, and insecurities, and potentially even transcending or integrating those protector parts that we have going on. So back to me, back to me being in my day-to-day here, I'm recording this at the end of August. It's tiny little actions, right? It's not some big bombastic thing that I'm doing. It's taking actions as the new identity, as the new expanded version of myself.
I'm saying, what would they do if this identity was truly clicked in?
What would they do? How would they speak?
How would they have this conversation?
What would they write? What would they say?
How would they communicate? And then I'm acting on those things, and when those Things feel scary, when those things feel impossible, when those things pitch me into nervous system activation, I am doing my own internal work, my own internal processes, all of the Manifestor Health tools and meditations to integrate those parts. I get familiar with the parts that are freaking out and I have a practice to integrate them. And so then I can take the action step that is required, and every time I act, As the new identity, it reinforces the new identity that I am trying to install, and I am rescoping my DMN, my default mode network. And so when we change the DMN, when we change the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves, when we change the way that we see ourselves, our default mode changes, meaning we're not defaulting into the old patterns anymore. We're defaulting into the new patterns. So that's really cool. That's really exciting.
So what I'm about to share with you, believe it or not, all of this is just the intro to the actual episode today.
What I'm actually about to share with you is what I've been listening to on repeat through this process for myself to remind myself of these concepts so I can show up as my more expanded self, the new identity, the limitless potential identity. That's what I'm saying. I'm stepping into my limitless era where Anything feels possible. I'm stretching the bars on my reality, what I'm able to see as possible for myself. I'm busting through some upper limits, busting through some ceilings. I'm operating as the identity of somebody who believes that that is possible for me. And so I'm listening to this all of the time, and I felt really intuitively called to share it here with you today. So maybe you could use it as a little pep talk for yourself like I've been doing.
So it is a part of a module from Manifest Your Health. And if you haven't yet downloaded my app, what are you waiting for? Might I suggest it? There are some pretty powerful, incredible transformations that are happening over there. There are daily practices that help you tune into a higher possibility for yourself. We've got parts integration practices like we talked about, but also a lot more. You get access to the entirety of the Manifest Your Health system. It's a 5-phase system, and it includes modules like this, what I'm about to play for you, where I'm really explaining these concepts to you. So yes, you have meditations, you have nervous system regulation tools and practices, but there's also classes and lessons in there. And that was really, really important for me to include.
And I wanna share a comment that just came in from one of our one-on-one clients, because when you're a one-on-one client of ours, you also get access to the Manifest Your Health app in the membership. Mm-hmm.
And she said, Manifest Your Health is so spot on for me. I really like to know the mechanics behind why I am experiencing something to really trust the possible solutions. So the way the modules really break down each concept and the science behind it is also powerful. Totally music to my ears to hear that because that's literally why I created it is with that intention.
For those of us that know chronic health challenges and chronic symptoms, we can't just trust, you know, we can't just, we don't have a bias.
in without really deeply understanding the science behind it, the whys behind it. And so there's so much of that within Manifest Your Health. You'll learn so much about your body, about your mind, about your body's ability to heal, about the power that your mind and your emotions have over your body's ability to heal.
It's just good stuff.
Anyway, the reason I'm telling you all of this is because as you're listening to this podcast today, it might light something up Within you. But remember, remember, we have to turn insight or turn inspiration into action. Action is what crystallizes change. Acting out the new identity is going to create the new identity. And in this membership, that's exactly what we're doing. We keep it pushing. We're integrating parts and protectors and shadow aspects of ourselves so we can really step forward as our true authentic self. We're creating familiarity.
In the nervous system as we do this. So the new identity begins to feel safe. We keep taking little action over little action, and that compounds into magnificent change and miracles over time. And last thing I'll say here is that I will be teaching a live class this Thursday at 1:00 PM. So Thursday, September 3rd at 1:00 PM Eastern for anybody who is in the membership. It's gonna be live coaching with me, plus a live breathwork experience. I haven't taught breathwork in a while, so I'm really, really excited to hold space for all of you. you guys.
I'm gonna actually take you through another process that I've been using for myself lately, and it's been amazing. And we are gonna do a little bit of parts integration in the breathwork experience. So if you wanna experience what I've been talking about, there is still time to join because you can join the live class when you join the Manifest Your Health app and membership. So anyway, here's the snippet of the module.
I hope you enjoy it. I hope it helps. And as always, I hope you keep coming back for more. Love you guys.
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And this leads me into talking about your story. This is the real reason I wanted to create Manifest Your Health, because everything I just said is enough to change everything and anything for you, including your health. That is a truth. That is a truth.
When I like cracked this code, I like figured it out. I wanted to tell everybody about it. So I started telling everybody about it. I'm like, all you got to do is what do you believe?
What would you rather believe? And how would you feel and act if you actually believe that? And then practice those feelings right now. That's all you got to do.
4-step process, super easy. We'll change everything. You'll start making millions. You'll heal your body. You'll get that guy. Like, all of it, it all changes. And what I— and I was so excited to share it with everybody. What I found, however, is that I was met with people telling me all of the reasons why not.
Here's a laundry list of why this won't work for me. You know, in those situations, I realize people are so— we, you know, not just like you people, it's like all of us, all of us are so committed To our own limiting ideas about what's possible for us.
This is where identity comes into play, by the way.
That's why we're spending so much time talking about identity. We live our lives in protest to what's possible. We choose to reenact the past, to reenact what happened to us. Hippocrates says, before you heal someone, ask him if he's willing to give up the thing that made him Sick. Sometimes the thing that makes us sick is the story that we tell ourselves, and nothing will piss anybody off more than that statement. Trust me, I have said it on Instagram. People will fight you. They'll fight you.
And this is, this is why I say this module is not for everybody. You might not be at the point in your health journey where this feels good. This might feel really instigating. Really jarring, really upsetting. And that is perfectly okay. There will come a point most likely where you are ready to receive this. And in that situation, you can come back to it, right? But you have full ownership and agency over you. So if this is like, this ain't it for me, that's okay.
That is okay. You don't have to buy into this right now. What I do want you to know is that you have right now in this very moment, so much healing potential present with you. But it might require you to surrender your story in order to access it. And that's it.
And you might not be ready to surrender your story, and that's cool.
So let's like drill into what I actually mean by story. And it's just your inner narrative. It's the story that you are telling yourself about yourself. And if you're not really sure what your stories are, if I tell you this is what you need to do to heal, 4 steps. It's as simple as 4 steps. When I tell you that and you come up with a list of reasons why you can't, why your unique situation doesn't actually allow for that, why your situation is so unique that it won't work for you, congratulations. There's a good chance we just uncovered your story. Okay? That is it.
The story that you tell yourself. About what's possible, about your situation, about your lot in life. That's the story. And then as the saying goes, if you want to argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. And so I want to make it really abundantly clear that nobody is telling you that these things aren't real. You're like, but, but, but, but, but, but, but this happened.
I know, I know.
And I am not saying it didn't happen. I'm not saying your situation isn't true. I'm not saying it's not real. It's just that if you are so attached to this as the only story that creates or reinforces your identity and your sense of self. And we know that your identity informs your beliefs, which dictates the way that you act, which creates the way that you feel, which creates your results in your reality. So if you are attached to your story as the only truth, it doesn't allow for other potential options to enter into your field. So the beauty of all of this is that we do actually get to write a new story. And rewriting the narrative doesn't change what happened in the past.
I want to be really clear about that. But it can change our perspective or our perception. And because perception is projection, if we can change our perception of what happened, this can allow us to heal. Because what happens is that we interpret things that happen to us in a very unique way. You know, it's like there's 2 sides to the story, then there's the truth. There's like bazillion sides to the story in reality. So we interpret through our own unique set of filters and beliefs, we interpret what happened to us, and then we record it. We record the events as memories the way that we perceived them.
And when we remember, when we go back and remember these events, which we tend to do with things that are like highly emotionally charged, when we remember them, we're remembering in the them in the same way that we perceive them. So we're repeating those same patterns, we're repeating the same neural pathways, we're deepening the grooves over time. And when we do this, we're activating the DMN repeatedly over and over and over again in the same patterns. And if you remember, we briefly touched on the DMN, the default mode network in the brain. The DMN is basically our identity. So we're just reinforcing the identity. This happened, this happened, and this happened, and it happened just like this. We're baking that into our identity.
The DMN is your neurological basis of the self. It's who you are. This is why neuroscientists call it the me network. It's your personality. It's how you decide what is true about you in your life. It's called the default mode because that's exactly what it is. It's our default. It's kind of like a set it and forget it.
We're not giving a lot of thought to it. It's just like kind of running a program. And that's not a bad thing. When we talk about relying on patterns like thought patterns and programs to live our lives, it's usually painted in such a negative light, but like brushing your teeth, tying your shoe, knowing how to drive a car, those are all programs. So like, thank goodness we have programs and patterns in place. Otherwise, it would take a lot of time and effort to just like exist in the world. So it's not always a bad thing. Depending on these programs to live our life day to day makes sense.
But when we let these patterns define who we are, Especially if our definition of who we are doesn't align with our hopes, dreams, desires, goals, fullest potential, highest expression of self. That's when we might need to reinvestigate, you know, like, is this really working for me? Is this really working for me? The reality is, the truth is that your identity, your sense of self can change. It can change. You have the ability to change it. It feels like it can't, but it actually can. Because this DMN, this, these parts of the brain are yearning for a narrative. They're looking for you to compose a story of who you are. It's linking up your past with your present and what we consider possible for our future.
So it's basically using the past to kind of like scan around the present and predict the future. So if you don't like what you're getting, you're going to have to put a little bit of effort into changing this DMN because your brain is actively searching for the story of who you are. So you got to give it different inputs if you want to change. Joe Dispenza says your personality creates your personal reality. We all love that little chestnut, but it's basically like your sense of self creates what you see. Your personality is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel. So if you keep thinking, acting, and feeling in the exact same way, the brain and the body are going to wire and fire in the exact same way. So they all become hardwired programs.
And so this is how we continue to play out the past through our physical body in the present moment every single day. The body is just going to play out what the mind is telling
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The beauty of this, and this is like, this is where like the kind of like the tough love comes in, right? It's like holding you accountable to yourself. It's not always It doesn't always feel good. But the beauty of all of this is that if you don't like your current physical reality, there's so much opportunity to change the story so that you're not living your life as a testament to what happened to you in the past. But moving beyond this does require that we sort of get out of this default mode. And so The question probably becomes, well, how the hell do we do that? And honestly, I think the first place to start— everyone's like, you got to change your circumstance, change, change, change. Yes. And I think the first place to start is to make a decision. I will no longer endorse that old story.
This ends now. I am choosing. I am deciding. I don't think we give enough power And I don't think we have enough reverence for just the power of intention in deciding, in choosing. I am done. I'm done with this. I'm done with this. I will no longer continue to reenact the past through my current decision-making.
I will recognize when old thoughts, when old feelings, when old behaviors are happening, and I will interrupt the pattern. So you see how this class builds on so much of what we've done and learned up into this point, because you have the tools to do all of that. You have the tools to set the intention, you have the tools for awareness, you have the tools for pattern interrupt, you already have those tools. So now we get to use them in a different maybe way. So other ways to change the DMN is actually new experiences, it's doing new things, you're breaking your usual routine. And in doing that, you allow yourself to see yourself in a different way. And that's why it helps to kind of like disrupt the DMN. Psychedelics also will do this.
This is why people can have like profound changes in their reality, their mental health and their physical health post-psychedelic, either microdosing or like a full journey, macrodosing journey. But you don't have to do psychedelics in order to do this. A lot of what we're doing is kind of designed to change the DMN. But I want you to like really think of like how locked into our days and our systems we can get when we're sick. You know, like as we start to build out safety structures of like, this is the exact way I have to do it. Like, I, this is exactly what I have to do in order to feel safe. And I completely understand that. Like, I understand why we do that.
We create our own safety mechanisms, right? It's hard. I will say it's challenging or maybe even impossible to disrupt the DMN when we're doing the exact same thing day after day after day after day. So just kind of keep that in mind. When we do give ourselves the option and the ability and the opportunity to shift the DMN, when we decide, when we create a change. And by the way, just enrolling in Manifest Your Health and coming to the live classes or watching the replays and doing the homework, that is shifting. That's shifting the DMN. That is an opportunity to do that. So just being here, well done.
You're already doing it. But it's giving your brain the chance to create and reinforce new neural pathways that can override the existing ones. So part of this, right, is like building out a new identity, but we're doing it like at a brain-based level, which is pretty darn cool. And of course, we can't, like, literally rewrite the past. But what we can do, what we all have the power and the ability to do, is change how we experience it and change what becomes part of our default moving forward. So I'll go back to that child of an alcoholic identity. I found myself reviewing old memories with anger and with hurt and with resentment and with grief. And when I decided, when I recognized what was happening, and again, this is not to like bypass, like, you know, I, I work with therapists.
I like dealt with my shit. And then at a certain point, I'm like, this is no longer serving me, right? Just like staying stuck here. When I made a decision that I'm no longer going to like operate like under this identity, like wearing a cap, like child of an alcoholic, don't you know? Don't you know this about me? When I decided to not do that. I realized that I was like remembering memories that were like happy and filled with love. I remember saying to my friend like, oh my God, like I was so loved. I was surrounded by so much love. So it's not that anything changed. Nothing changed in my past.
It's just that I was looking at it through a new lens. This is the power of the mind. This is the power of intention. This is it. And that is obviously going to create new feelings within my body, and that is going to help with my biology. And this is why disrupting the DMN in some research may play a role in spontaneous healing. Radical change, radical healing can really only come when we're able to see and understand ourselves in a new, completely different light. So we can change the way that we perceive and interpret the world, ourselves, other people, certain events, our own health.
How we perceive the world determines how we experience it. Our perception is everything. Our perception is everything. It is perception that creates the thought that creates the feeling. And this is how, how we perceive the world trickles all the way down to our individual cells. So I'm going to ask, what is the story? Because we know how important story is. What is the story you are telling yourself about your capacity to heal? The next question on the heels of that, are you in any way, shape, or form perceiving yourself as a perpetual victim of circumstance. This keeps happening to me.
This is happening to me.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk’tional Nutrition Podcast. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you got something from today's show, don't forget, subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.

