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Steady Your Nervous System Through Mind, Body and Daily Life
You can feel calm, clear and steady again by working with your body as well as your thinking. A nervous system that settles well moves into alertness when something needs you. It then returns to rest once the moment has passed. That flexibility is what makes ordinary life feel manageable, and it can be rebuilt. The practical part is that this one system can be reached from many directions. Breath and movement reach it. So do sleep, real rest, what you eat, and the people around you. More than seventy practitioners across seven fields each work on it from their own angle. What you get is several routes in, rather than a single method to follow.
Find the Route Into Your Own Nervous System That Fits You
- Read your own state accurately, including the flat, heavy shutdown that can look like laziness
- Settle your body through breath, movement and touch when thinking alone will not reach it
- Use sleep and genuine rest as active repair, rather than a reward for finishing everything
- Eat and care for your gut in ways that steady your mood from the body upward
- Build relationships that regulate you, and repair them well when they wobble
- Treat the body's alarm signals as useful information you can act on
Read Your Own State Accurately
Knowing which state you are actually in is the skill everything else rests on. People settle into whatever state they live in, so someone running on high alert for years will describe themselves as fine, and mean it. The internal comparison has quietly moved, and there is nothing left to measure the present against.
Threat detection happens below conscious awareness. The technical name for it is neuroception (your body reading safety or danger before you have any thought about it), and it explains why reasoning with yourself so often fails. Your body has already made its assessment and started acting on it before deliberate thought arrives.
A practical distinction earns its place here. Stress winds up and then comes back down. A trauma response makes a lasting change, and the system does not return on its own. Two people can go through the same afternoon. One has an ordinary hard day while the other is altered by it. What decides the difference is the load already being carried, and whether anyone was present afterwards.
Reading your own startle response gives you somewhere concrete to begin. Notice what makes you jump. Ask whether the size of the reaction fits the situation. Count how often it happens. Not flinching at all is as much a signal as flinching at everything.
Settle the Body When Thinking Will Not Reach It
Working directly with the body gives you leverage that conversation cannot. Somatic approaches (methods that work through physical sensation rather than discussion) rest on two ideas. Titration means touching a difficult sensation a small amount at a time, because the first contact always produces some contraction. Pendulation means moving between that contraction and a place of ease, rather than trying to arrive at calm and stay there.
Both exist to prevent the same failure. Going too far too fast overwhelms the system, and overwhelm is registered as the difficult thing happening again. Speed is what defeats people here, and a gentler pace is the faster route.
Breath is the most practical entry point, because it is the one automatic function you can also take over deliberately. Slowing the exhale below roughly six breaths a minute makes an anxious state very hard to sustain. Counting the breath does part of the work by itself, since counting is a small deliberate choice in a moment that felt like it offered none.
One caution is worth carrying. A calming instruction can itself register as threat, if being open has previously meant being hurt. Someone who feels worse when told to relax is not failing the practice. Their system is reporting something accurate. The answer is a different entry point rather than more effort.
Treat Sleep and Rest as Active Repair
Good sleep gives you two things that happen nowhere else in your day. It processes your life and makes some sense of it, and it clears waste from the brain. Almost every practitioner here names rest as a starting point rather than a reward, which is unusual agreement in a field where disagreement is the norm.
Quality matters more than hours. There is open disagreement about the right number, which is itself informative. One position holds that the longest-lived sleep around six and a half hours. Another counts seven to nine hours across a whole twenty-four hours, rather than per night. A third treats eight hours as the middle of a range rather than a requirement.
Insomnia is better understood as a symptom than as a condition in itself. That changes the question from how to sleep to what is keeping you awake. Waking briefly in the night turns out to be ordinary. It becomes a problem mainly through the story told about it.
Rest also splits into kinds that cannot substitute for one another. Physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, social, sensory and creative rest are seven separate needs. Sleeping longer will not fill a social or creative deficit. Someone who says they have no time to rest is usually reporting that they do not know which kind they are missing.
Steady Your Mood From the Gut Upward
Caring for your gut gives you a lever on mood that works from the body rather than through willpower. The mechanism runs through inflammation, and the version that does most damage is not the dramatic kind. A low-grade version sustained across years is associated with depression, cognitive decline, autoimmune conditions and metabolic disease. Its smallness is what makes it hard to spot, because no day marks the beginning.
The gut regulates how high that inflammation sits. When the gut lining becomes more permeable, material crosses that was never meant to, meets the immune system and raises the response. The immune system is working correctly in that sequence. What repays attention is the permeability rather than the immunity.
Traffic between gut and brain runs mostly upward. One frequently cited ratio puts it at nine messages travelling from gut to brain for every one going the other way, which widens what a gut problem can plausibly cause. Diet, sleep, exercise, stress and air quality are named as the levers that move inflammation in either direction.
Hormones carry similar weight. A single blood test showing a normal result rules out two specific adrenal diseases. It does not confirm that everything is working. The pattern of cortisol (the main stress hormone) across a whole day tells you considerably more than one reading does.
Steady Yourself Through Other People
Other people are among the most effective regulators available to you. Human nervous systems are not built to settle in isolation, and co-regulation runs continuously through voice, facial expression, touch and simple presence. That makes social contact closer to a nutrient than a comfort, which is why solitude can feel harder than the difficulty being faced.
Attachment patterns formed early keep operating in adult partnerships, friendships and workplaces. One pattern heightens the system and scans constantly for signs of disconnection. Another shuts it down and relies wholly on the self. A third combines the two, because the person who should have provided safety was also frightening.
These patterns can change at any age, though the work happens inside relationships rather than alone. What builds security is the reliability of repair afterwards rather than the absence of conflict. Caregivers need to read a child correctly around seventy per cent of the time, which means thirty per cent of ordinary mistakes still leaves security intact.
One correction is worth knowing in advance. A relationship that confirms what you already believe about yourself can feel safe simply because it is familiar, and familiarity is easily mistaken for security. Calm can register as boring at first, which is useful to expect before you discard it.
Turn the Body's Alarm Signals Into Useful Information
Treating the alarm as information makes it far easier to live with. It works like a warning light, and the light is not the fault. An amygdala that fires at burnt toast is functioning as designed, because the cost of missing a real threat has always been higher than the cost of a false alarm.
This has a consequence people find surprising. The aim is not zero anxiety, and trying to eliminate it resembles the very mechanism that sustains it. What changes things is no longer being afraid of the feeling, at which point it loses most of its grip.
The physical sensations of anxiety and excitement are the same, produced by the same rise in the sympathetic nervous system. Only the interpretation differs. Courage, on this reading, is doing the thing while still feeling afraid rather than waiting for the fear to clear.
Several concrete practices follow. Set aside ten minutes at a fixed hour to worry deliberately, which defers worry rather than fighting it. Write thoughts down and then tear up what you wrote, since that separates you from them where suppression only strengthens them. Give the worrying part of you a name you do not take too seriously, which puts a little distance between you and it.
Go deeper with what matters to you
The source works through each of these routes in far more granular detail than a set of themes can convey. It sets out the named breathing patterns and their counts. It gives the staged sequences for approaching difficult material safely, and the specific attachment repair exercises. Each practitioner disagreement appears in full, with the reasoning attached. It also holds the exact protocols, timings and safety conditions that separate a principle from something you can actually do.
Perhaps something has not shifted despite the changes you have already made. Perhaps a symptom pattern connects to nothing obvious, or you want to know which of these routes fits you best. Bring that question to the chat. It will draw the relevant parts of the source together into an answer shaped around your circumstances. Several distinct approaches usually exist for the same difficulty, so the useful question is which one suits you.
Where these ideas come from
These ideas come from Nervous System Regulation Summit, a seven day online event published in July 2026 through Conscious Life (an online health education publisher). It was hosted by Dr Alex Howard (a psychology practitioner) with the co-hosts Meagen Gibson and Jaï Bristow. Dr Alex Howard founded a clinic specialising in fatigue, trauma and anxiety. He has led a practitioner training programme since 2005. Each of the seven days takes one route into nervous system regulation. The seven cover trauma, the system itself, the mind and body connection, relationships, anxiety, rest and functional medicine. More than seventy practitioners contribute, from somatic therapists and psychologists to sleep specialists and physicians. Their disagreements are preserved rather than reconciled. It is well worth seeking out directly for anyone who wants to hear these voices in full.
What you read here is our own source, an independent work built from those ideas. Every concept has been studied and then rewritten from scratch and reshaped so it can answer your questions alongside other refined sources. Nothing from the reference work has been copied. The knowledge has been transformed, not reproduced, and the reference is named clearly because the ideas deserve proper credit and because it stands on its own merits.
Good to know
This page draws on the work of qualified experts and documented experiences, shared for you to explore and act on as you see fit. While it comes from professional and expert sources, I'm not acting as your licensed medical professional, mental-health professional, counsellor or therapist, and the spiritual ideas and practices here are offered for your own exploration, not as factual, medical or psychological claims. You know your own situation best, so weigh these ideas, take what's useful, and make your own informed choices. If you're in immediate danger or it's an emergency, please contact your local emergency services straight away.
Who you'll hear from
Psychology practitioner and host, founder of the Optimum Health Clinic, an integrative medicine clinic with twenty-five full-time practitioners supporting patients in more than fifty countries. He has delivered over ten thousand consultations, has led the Therapeutic Coaching practitioner programme since 2005, and is the author of Why ME?, Decode Your Fatigue and It's Not Your Fault.
Meagen Gibson
Chief Content Officer in online health education and co-host, with a prior career in award-winning journalism, teaching and entrepreneurship. She co-created and directed the documentary series How I Created A Cult, and teaches on journalism, entrepreneurship, film and improv.
Jaï Bristow
Content creator, group facilitator and public speaker who works as a diversity, equality and inclusion consultant, running workshops on power, privilege and prejudice. They created Beyond Boxes, and have facilitated groups around social identity since 2016, drawing on mindfulness, inquiry and nonviolent communication.
Dr Richard Schwartz
Founder of Internal Family Systems, which originated in the early 1980s from a bulimia outcome study at the University of Illinois Chicago. He co-authored Releasing Our Burdens with Thomas Hübl.
Dr Peter Levine
Founder of Somatic Experiencing, holding a PhD in medical biophysics from UC Berkeley and a second doctorate in psychology, with over forty years in the field. He founded the Ergos Institute and Somatic Experiencing International, wrote Waking the Tiger, In an Unspoken Voice and Trauma and Memory, and received the USABP Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
Dr Kristin Neff
Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who ran the first empirical studies on self-compassion over twenty years ago. She credits Paul Gilbert and Compassion Focused Therapy as her source for the threat and care systems account.
Anna Runkle
Creator of The Crappy Childhood Fairy, with over a million subscribers, author of Re-Regulated and of Connectability. She teaches a daily practice pairing expressive writing with Transcendental Meditation, and states she is not qualified to diagnose or treat complex PTSD.
Britt Frank
LSCSW and somatic experiencing practitioner, trained to level three in Internal Family Systems, with a Duke undergraduate degree and a University of Kansas master's. She is the author of The Science of Stuck.
Dr James S Gordon
Harvard-educated psychiatrist with around fifty years in practice, clinical professor at Georgetown and founder of the Center for Mind-Body Medicine. He chaired the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy under Clinton and George W Bush, and wrote Transforming Trauma.
Kelly McDaniel
Licensed professional counsellor and author of Ready to Heal and Mother Hunger, working on insecure attachment and maternal deprivation.
Thomas Hübl
Teacher, author and international facilitator in systems complexity and cultural change, who studied medicine and then spent four years in retreat before founding the Academy of Inner Science. He wrote Attuned, Healing Collective Trauma and Releasing Our Burdens, co-founded the Pocket Project in 2016, and is a visiting scholar at the Weiss Institute at Harvard University.
Dr Pedram Shojai
Former Taoist monk and abbot, doctor of oriental medicine and Qi Gong master, author of The Urban Monk, Rise and Shine and The Art of Stopping Time, and producer of the films Vitality, Origins and Prosperity.
Paul F. Austin
Founder of Third Wave and the Psychedelic Coaching Institute, running a ten-month practitioner training, and founder of the Microdosing Collective, which works on regulatory policy for low doses.
Dr g, also credited as Claudelle R Glasgow
PsyD and somatic experiencing practitioner with nearly twenty years of practice, taught by Peter Levine, working from a radical existential-somatic approach. They founded Confluence, a space for Black community and Black mental health practitioners.
Jean Hall
Author and yoga teacher who has taught yoga, mindful movement and meditation since 1996, working in somatic vinyasa with breath as the source of movement and earth as the source of support.
Dr Stephen Porges
Distinguished University Scientist and founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium at Indiana University, Professor of Psychiatry at UNC Chapel Hill and Professor Emeritus at UIC and Maryland. He originated polyvagal theory, coined the term neuroception, is a past president of the Society for Psychophysiological Research, and wrote Polyvagal Safety.
Dr Daniel Siegel
Clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, co-founding director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center and executive director of the Mindsight Institute. He is founding editor of the Norton Professional Series on interpersonal neurobiology, covering over eighty textbooks, and wrote five New York Times bestsellers including Aware, Mind and The Whole-Brain Child.
Dr Arielle Schwartz, PhD
Licensed clinical psychologist, EMDR consultant, somatic psychotherapist and certified complex trauma professional in private practice in Boulder, Colorado. She is a Kripalu yoga instructor and the author of The Complex PTSD Workbook, The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook and Therapeutic Yoga for Trauma.
Master Mingtong Gu
Wisdom Healing Qigong teacher who holds two master's degrees, in mathematics and fine arts, and studied at the medicine-less Qigong hospital founded by Grandmaster Dr Pang Ming. He founded The Chi Center in 2001 and Southwest Sanctuary in New Mexico, and was named Qigong Master of the Year by the 13th World Tai Chi and Qigong Congress.
Dr Aimie Apigian
Board certified in preventive medicine and addiction medicine, with master's degrees in biochemistry and public health and training in functional medicine. She founded Trauma Healing Accelerated, hosts the Biology of Trauma podcast, and wrote The Biology of Trauma.
Nick Ortner
CEO of The Tapping Solution, author of the New York Times bestsellers The Tapping Solution and The Tapping Solution for Pain Relief. He produced the 2007 documentary The Tapping Solution, runs the Tapping World Summit, and founded the Tapping Solution Foundation after the Sandy Hook shootings.
Dr Diane Poole Heller
Senior faculty at the Somatic Experiencing Training Institute, who worked with Peter Levine for many years and has taught in Denmark, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, Israel, Germany and Australia. She is the author of The Power of Attachment and Crash Course.
Dr Dawson Church
Founder of the National Institute for Integrative Healthcare and author of The Genie in Your Genes, Mind to Matter, Bliss Brain and Spiritual Intelligence. His Veterans Stress Project has offered free PTSD treatment to over twenty-two thousand veterans over the past decade.
Espen Wold-Jensen
Author of Quantum Breath, who has worked with over two hundred and fifty thousand students, with the Quantum Experience reaching clients in over twelve countries.
Anthony Abbagnano
Founder of Alchemy of Breath, a hundred-thousand-person online community with facilitators worldwide, and co-founder of the Alchemy School of Healing Arts in Italy with his wife Amy Rachelle Abbagnano.
Naomi Dake
Psychology practitioner at the Optimum Health Clinic, who spent twenty years in organizational development, leadership development, HR and change management including the NHS before retraining. She came to the clinic as a patient with chronic fatigue syndrome.
Kirsty Cullen
CEO of the Optimum Health Clinic, a UK clinic specialising in fatigue-related illness, who conducts the clinic interviews in this material.
Dr Rick Hanson
Senior fellow at the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, author of six New York Times bestsellers in 31 languages including Buddha's Brain, Hardwiring Happiness and Neurodharma. He has lectured at NASA, Google, Oxford and Harvard, and makes the Being Well podcast with his son Forrest.
Dr Judith Orloff
Psychiatrist and member of the UCLA psychiatric clinical faculty, author of The Empath's Survival Guide, Thriving as an Empath, The Genius of Empathy and Second Sight.
Irene Lyon MSc
Holder of an MSc in biomedical and health science, based in Vancouver, whose programmes have reached over nine thousand five hundred people in more than ninety countries. She studied and practises three bodies of work, the Feldenkrais method, Peter Levine's Somatic Experiencing, and Kathy Kain's somatic practice.
Juan Pablo Barahona
Creator of Quantum Flow and Quantum Breath, who has given over five thousand guided sessions in twenty years, with certified practitioners in more than forty countries.
Jason Prall
Health educator and filmmaker who created the nine-part film series The Human Longevity Project in 2018 and wrote Beyond Longevity. He owns a brain balancing centre in San Diego treating traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, anxiety, fatigue and brain fog, and discloses a commercial partnership in the technology used there.
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Science journalist and author of The Angel and the Assassin, named a WIRED best book of 2020, Childhood Disrupted, Girls on the Brink, named a Washington Post best book of 2022, and The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal.
Dr Austin Perlmutter
Board certified in internal medicine, co-author of Brain Wash with his father David Perlmutter, and senior director of science and clinical innovation at Big Bold Health, where he runs an IRB-approved pilot trial on polyphenols and epigenetic expression. He hosts the Get the Stuck Out podcast.
Hilary Jacobs Hendel LCSW
Certified psychoanalyst and AEDP psychotherapist and supervisor, with a BA in biochemistry from Wesleyan University and an MSW from Fordham University. She wrote It's Not Always Depression, has published in the New York Times, Time and Oprah, and was mental health consultant to AMC's Mad Men.
Dr David Hanscom
Orthopaedic spine surgeon in Seattle who left practice in 2019 to teach chronic pain resolution, and author of Back in Control and Do You Really Need Spine Surgery? His action plan is The DOC Journey, standing for Direct Your Own Care.
Julia Alderman
Yoga teacher and nutritional therapist working one to one in clinic and online, with training spanning Iyengar, Yin, Yoga Nidra, Well Woman and perinatal yoga.
Terrence "Terry" Real
Founder of the Relational Life Institute, running workshops and a two and a half year professional training programme. He wrote I Don't Want to Talk About It, How Can I Get Through to You?, The New Rules of Marriage, and Us, which reached the New York Times bestseller list.
Dr Stan Tatkin PsyD MFT
Developer of PACT, the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy, working as teacher, clinician and researcher. He has published dozens of academic articles and six bestselling books translated into Spanish, Chinese, Turkish and Romanian, and runs the PACT Institute training therapists worldwide.
Gay Hendricks
Pioneer in body intelligence and relationship transformation for more than forty years, co-author with Kathlyn Hendricks of Conscious Loving and Conscious Loving Ever After, and author of The Big Leap and The Genius Zone.
Kathlyn "Katie" Hendricks
Pioneer in body intelligence and relationship transformation, who with Gay Hendricks has written more than forty books and trained hundreds of coaches worldwide to add a body-intelligence perspective to medicine, sports psychology, education and personal growth.
Caroline Strawson
Award-winning expert, speaker and Hay House author with more than 700,000 followers, who retrained in Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems and EMDR after surviving domestic abuse, coercive control and homelessness. She wrote How to Heal After Narcissistic Abuse and founded the community interest company No Visible Bruises.
Marianne Williamson
Spiritual teacher and author who has led in spiritual and religiously progressive circles for over three decades, with fourteen books of which four reached number one on the New York Times list. She founded Project Angel Food, which has delivered more than 13 million meals since 1989, and ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
Dr Lindsay C Gibson
Licensed clinical psychologist specialising in adult children of emotionally immature parents, whose book is translated into 22 languages and holds over 13,000 five-star reviews. She trained in psychological testing and has published a guided journal for adult children of emotionally immature parents.
Dr Keith Witt
Licensed psychologist practising in Santa Barbara since 1973 and founder of the School of Love, having conducted over sixty thousand therapy sessions. He has given three TEDx talks, contributed to Integral Life and the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice, and wrote Integral Mindfulness, Shadow Light and Loving Completely.
Dr Margaret Paul
Co-creator of Inner Bonding with twelve published books, who has taught hundreds of thousands worldwide across some five decades. Do I Have to Give Up Me to Be Loved By You has sold over one million copies, and she is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council.
Dr Meg-John Barker
Queer therapeutic writer on sex, gender and relationships, author of Rewriting the Rules, How To Understand Your Gender, Life Isn't Binary and three graphic guides. Barker uses they/them pronouns and writes with Alex Iantaffi.
Aki Omori
Somatic movement educator and therapist with around twenty years teaching yoga, certified in the Neuro Affective Relational Model and Body-Mind Centering, registered in somatic movement education and therapy, and holding a diploma in Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy. She holds a faculty position with Embody-Move UK and runs a private clinic in London.
Heather Monroe
Integrative psychotherapist specialising in relational trauma, a certified Kundalini yoga teacher trained in Somatic Experiencing.
Dr Ronald Siegel
Assistant Professor of Psychology part time at Harvard Medical School, where he has taught for over thirty-five years. He wrote The Extraordinary Gift of Being Ordinary and The Mindfulness Solution, and his course The Science of Mindfulness was produced by The Great Courses.
Dr Cathy Malchiodi
Holder of a doctorate in psychology with three decades of trauma work, and executive director of the Trauma-Informed Practices and Expressive Arts Therapy Institute, whose training has reached over twenty-five thousand practitioners worldwide. She has written twenty books published in twenty languages, delivered over seven hundred keynotes, and assisted over five hundred agencies including the World Health Organization and the United Nations.
Michael Stone
Founder of Neurodynamic Breathwork Online, established in 2018, which has facilitated over eight hundred online sessions with participants from more than one hundred and twenty countries. He practised holotropic breathwork for around ten years before becoming a facilitator.
Mark Walsh
Founder of Embodiment Unlimited, known as Mr Embodiment, who has trained over two thousand embodiment coaches in more than forty countries. He wrote Embodiment, Working with the Body in Training and Coaching, and Embodied Meditation, ran the Embodiment Conference, and founded Sane Ukraine, which trains Ukrainian psychological resilience and trauma educators in Lviv.
Dr Eric Gordon
Medical Director of Gordon Medical Associates and president of the Gordon Medical Research Center, with forty-five years of clinical practice focused on ME and chronic fatigue, Lyme disease and autoimmune disease. He co-authored Metabolic Features of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with Robert Naviaux, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016.
Deirdre Fay
Psychotherapist and educator with thirty-five years in practice and forty years exploring wisdom traditions alongside contemporary psychotherapy, working at the intersection of trauma, attachment, yoga and meditation. She wrote Becoming Safely Embodied and Attachment-Based Yoga and Meditation for Trauma Recovery, and co-authored Attachment Disturbances in Adults.
Dr Darryl Tonemah
Psychologist who is Kiowa, Comanche and Tuscarora, holding three bachelor's degrees in psychology, sociology and gerontology, a master's in community counseling, and a PhD in counseling psychology and cultural studies. He does trauma-informed counseling with Native groups across the United States and Canada, hosts The Singing Psychologist podcast, and runs First Nations Telehealth and Tonemah Consulting.
Claire Bidwell Smith
Grief therapist and author of The Rules of Inheritance, After This and Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief. She worked first in hospice and later in private practice, runs online grief programmes, and has written for the New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times.
Rebekah Ballagh
Certified counsellor and illustrator who founded Journey to Wellness, with four bestselling books of which three she wrote and illustrated herself, and a community of over three hundred and fifty thousand people.
David Ramcharran
Yin yoga teacher whose training totals nearly 1,000 hours, beginning at the Sivananda Ashram in Kerala and including a 500-hour Dharma Yoga qualification in New York with Sri Dharma Mittra and an 800-hour Dharma Yoga training covering advanced asana, psychic development and yoga nidra.
Dr Bruce Lipton
Cell biologist who worked on the medical faculty at the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine and conducted stem cell research at Stanford University. He wrote The Biology of Belief and The Honeymoon Effect, co-authored Spontaneous Evolution with Steve Bhaerman, and received the Goi Peace Award in Japan in 2009.
Dave Asprey
Biohacker who founded Bulletproof and is CEO of Upgrade Labs, owns True Dark and wrote its patents, and hosts The Human Upgrade podcast with almost a thousand episodes. He wrote Fast This Way and states he spent a million dollars on his own recovery.
Dr Fleet Maull
Author, meditation teacher and social entrepreneur who is a Zen Roshi and senior Dharma teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He founded the HeartMind Institute, the Global Resilience Summit, the Prison Mindfulness Institute and the Engaged Mindfulness Institute, created neuro-somatic mindfulness and regenerative self-parenting, and wrote Radical Responsibility.
Charlie Morley
Lucid dreaming teacher authorised to teach in the Karma Kagyu lineage in 2008, who has run workshops in over twenty countries and received a Winston Churchill Fellowship grant in 2018 for veteran PTSD research. He wrote Wake Up to Sleep and lived in a Buddhist centre for almost eight years.
Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith
Board-certified internal medicine physician and work-life integration researcher, CEO of the workplace wellbeing consulting agency Restorasis and author of the bestselling Sacred Rest. Over 250,000 people have taken her free RestQuiz assessment.
Dan Brulé
Breathwork pioneer who created Breath Therapy and was among the original certified rebirthers, having taught more than 350,000 people in over seventy-five countries. His book Just Breathe has been published in fourteen languages, and he has written a monthly breath article since June 1976.
Dr Ellen Vora
Board-certified psychiatrist, acupuncturist and yoga teacher, holding a BA from Yale and an MD from Columbia, and author of the number one bestselling The Anatomy of Anxiety.
Dr Sue Morter
Practitioner of Bio-Energetic Medicine with over thirty years of clinical experience and author of The Energy Codes, a number one LA Times and USA Today bestseller.
Dr Christopher Winter
Neurologist and sleep researcher who has practised in Charlottesville, Virginia since 2004 and entered the field in 1993. He wrote The Sleep Solution and The Rested Child and hosts the podcast Sleep Unplugged.
Marc Gilson
Director of Client Services and Chief Product Designer at Centerpointe, which he joined in 1996, with almost thirty years in the field. He co-founded the Accelerated Results Coaching Team with the late Centerpointe founder Bill Harris, and wrote Nine Principles for Conscious Living and The Magical Wooden Path.
Adelene Cheong
Yoga teacher born in Malaysia and based in London, who leads a restorative sleep ritual practice.
Dr Tom O'Bryan
Functional medicine practitioner working on inflammation and the microbiome, who came into practice in 1980 and made a docuseries on autoimmune disease filmed across seven countries. He wrote a book on the hidden triggers of brain inflammation and his practice uses the wheat zoomer, NeuroZoomer Plus and gut zoomer tests.
Dr David Perlmutter
Board-certified neurologist and five-time New York Times bestselling author who received his MD from the University of Miami School of Medicine and is a board member and fellow of the American College of Nutrition. He wrote Grain Brain, Brain Maker and The Grain Brain Whole Life Plan, co-wrote Brain Wash with his son Austin Perlmutter, edited The Microbiome and the Brain, and hosts The Empowering Neurologist.
Dr Anu Arasu
Bioidentical hormone clinician and founder of London Bioidentical Hormones, who read Medicine at the Royal Free and University College London and was awarded the London Locke Hospital and Stuart Mill prizes on graduation.
Dr Trevor Cates
Naturopathic doctor and founder of The Spa Dr, the first woman licensed as a naturopathic doctor in the state of California, holding a medical degree from the National University of Natural Medicine. She wrote Clean Skin From Within and Natural Beauty Reset and produces the Hormones, Health and Harmony docuseries.
Trudy Scott
Nutritionist specialising in food mood expertise, targeted individual amino acids, pyroluria and the harmful effects of benzodiazepines. She is a past president of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals, received the 2012 Impact Award and the 2018 Mindshare Impact Award for Go-Giver, wrote The Anti-Anxiety Food Solution and hosts The Anxiety Summit.
Rebecca Edwards
Director of Education at Activated Probiotics, holding a BA, an Advanced Diploma in Naturopathy and a Diploma in Nutrition, credited on Day 7 for a session on trauma and the gut-brain axis.
Mona Chopra MA MS
Acupuncturist, hypnotherapist and meditation instructor with over two decades in mind-body medicine, and co-founder of the One Circle Wellness Center in New York City.
Dr Ameet Aggarwal
Practitioner of naturopathic and functional medicine, gestalt psychotherapy, family constellations, EMDR and homeopathy, voted one of the top forty-three naturopathic doctors worldwide. Sales of his book and online course fund his charitable work in Kenya.
An independent work. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the original teachers or publishers.
Added: August 27, 2026
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