Welcome to my podcast, Healing with Dr Helena, where I challenge the limiting way we currently view disease, and offer a new paradigm for vibrant health and true healing. If modern medicine isn’t providing you with enough answers, and you want to come alive and thrive, rather than merely survive, this podcast is for you.
It’s also for people who want to boost their brain to perform at their peak, avoid Alzheimer’s and other dementias, and live longer, stronger, healthier and happier.
Each episode comprises four parts:
- A Brain Booster
- A Health Headline
- An Exploration of What’s Missing from Modern Medicine
- A Whether Report where I answer your whether questions eg ‘I’d like to know whether you can really die of a broken heart?’
So here’s a glimpse of episode 2.
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Today’s Brain Booster is to recognise that every choice you make impacts your brain.
Everything you do, everything you think, everything you believe, and everything you feel, influences the health and functioning of your brain.
Your brain is, in fact, changing right now.
As you read these words, as you reflect on what they mean, as you fidget in your chair, as you look around the room, tiny connections in your brain are forming, strengthening, or fading away. Your brain is not a predetermined, established, unalterable machine. It’s a living, transforming, adapting organ that rewires itself in response to everything you experience.
This remarkable ability of our brain to change is known as neuroplasticity – and this ability to change, lasts for the duration of our lives.
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Today’s Health Headline is: humans don’t like facing their fears — and this gets in the way of healing.
What do I mean by that?
When we encounter an illness, our immediate response is to want to stomp out the symptoms as quickly as possible. But perhaps a more valuable approach would be to pause and reflect on what our body is trying to tell us.
Sometimes disease is our body calling out for rest, movement or better nutrition.
Sometimes disease is our heart calling out for forgiveness, fulfilment or deeper relationships.
And sometimes disease is our inner wisdom calling out to be heard and heeded.
And when we ask ourselves, ‘What part of me is calling out to me?’ the answer always comes. But we live such fast-paced, frantic, furious lives that we don’t hear the faint whisper of our intuition. And even if we pause for a moment — through meditation, mindfulness, a stroll in nature, or just keeping still – we don’t always want to hear the answer because it might entail us doing something we don’t want to do …
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What’s missing from modern medicine is recognising the need to change our inner state, not just our outer state, if we want true healing. Healing is not the same as eliminating symptoms or eradicating a disease. Surgery or chemo or radiotherapy can remove a cancer. But if a person is in the same state of being — physical, psychological or emotional — that led to the cancer, the cancer will return. Or some other disease will take its place. Maybe not immediately. Maybe not for several years. But re-emerge it will.
Cancer can be life-threatening and shakes people to their core, so they often re-evaluate their lives, values and what’s truly important to them. And I’d argue that it’s the inner changes — the shift in belief systems — the re-prioritisations — the search for answers — that keep the cancer away after the surgery, chemo or radiotherapy have done their job. Physical interventions can cut out tumours and kill cancer cells but they won’t keep the them away if the same factors that brought them on are at play.
Note that this is NOT about blaming a person for their disease. The speed of our lives is inherently health-eroding. Traumas that remain buried can express themselves as bodily ill health. Distressing events hinder the functioning of our immune system. A lot of things impact our physical and mental wellbeing that we aren’t consciously aware of. So it isn’t about blaming a person for their condition. It’s about creating a safe space for all of us to explore the link between our inner and outer lives. That’s the start of true healing.
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And today’s Whether Report answers the question: Whether you can really die of a broken heart?
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Click here to watch the episode on my YouTube channel, or listen to Healing with Dr Helena on your preferred podcast platform. I’ll publish a new episode every Monday, and you’ll receive an email notification that morning. Please subscribe to my podcast or YouTube channel so that you don’t miss an episode, and send your whether questions to: podcast@drhelenapopovic.com
If you’re happy for me to play your voice on my podcast, you can provide an audio file. Otherwise, you can type your question for me to read out.
I very much look forward to answering your questions and exploring how we can all build a smarter brain, stronger body and deeply fulfilling life.
Please share this Health-e-Byte with anyone who might find my podcast useful or interesting.
