Chronic stress, anxiety, and chronic pain can keep your brain stuck in protection mode. Learn how to calm your nervous system, retrain your brain, and create more safety for healing and resilience.

Why does your brain keep repeating the same stress patterns, anxious thoughts, or pain responses… even when you want to change?

Join me and my guest, Dr. Irena O'Brien, neuroscientist and founder of The Neuroscience School, to learn more about how the brain predicts, protects, and shapes our behaviors, emotions, and even chronic pain experiences.

👉 Download my free guide to understand why pain persists: https://www.thewellnessengineer.com/whypainpersists

Struggling with sleep? Wear blue-light-blocking glasses in the evening to help prepare your nervous system for better sleep. Save 10% at Vivarays with this link: https://vivarays.com/bydesign

In this episode, you'll learn:

⏰ 00:00 - Introduction

⏰ 02:45 - The Brain's Role in Safety and Energy Management

⏰ 12:47 - Understanding Pain as Protection

⏰ 21:42 - Stress and Its Impact on Energy

⏰ 34:25 - Finding Personal Practices for Calmness

⏰ 42:23 - The ONE thing you can do to activate self-healing

Check out Irena O'Brien's Bio:

Dr. Irena O'Brien is a cognitive neuroscientist, educator, and founder of The Neuroscience School. She is known for making complex brain science practical and accessible, helping coaches, leaders, and helping professionals better understand behavior, stress, resilience, and change through the lens of neuroscience.

After beginning her career in accounting, Dr. O'Brien returned to university and discovered a passion for neurobiology that changed the direction of her life. She earned her PhD in Psychology from the Université du Québec à Montréal and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at McGill University. Today, she is the creator of an ICF-accredited Applied Neuroscience program and host of the Neuroscience of Coaching podcast.

Irena O'Brien's gift:

The Neuroscience of Why Clients Get Stuck and The Brain-Based Change Blueprint offer practical, neuroscience-based insights into why change can feel difficult and the key conditions that help lasting transformation become possible. Check it out at https://loveneuroscience.com/wellness

Connect with Irena O'Brien:

Website: https://neuroscienceschool.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irenaobrien/

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Hi there! I am Jane Hogan, the Wellness Engineer, and the host of Wellness By Design. I spent 30 years designing foundations for buildings until the pain and inflammation of rheumatoid arthritis led me to hang up my hard hat and follow my heart. Now I blend my backgrounds in science and spirituality to teach people how to tap into the power of their mind, body and soul. I help them release pain naturally so they can become the best version of themselves.

Wellness By Design is a show dedicated to helping people achieve wellness, not by reacting to the world around them but by intentionally designing a life based on what their own body needs. In this show, we explore practices, methods, and scientific principles that help naturally relieve pain and inflammation.

Learn more at https://thewellnessengineer.com

Connect with Jane:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaneHoganHealth/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewellnessengineer/

Chronic pain in women is often misunderstood, dismissed, or treated as something to "just live with."

What if your chronic pain isn't a sign that your body is broken … but a sign that your nervous system has been stuck in protection mode?

Join me in this deeply personal episode as I share my experience attending the premiere of the women's health documentary sHEALed at the Cannes Film Festival and the powerful realization that women are suffering from chronic pain at disproportionately high rates.

👉 Download my free guide to understand why pain persists: https://www.thewellnessengineer.com/whypainpersists

Struggling with sleep? Wear blue-light-blocking glasses in the evening to help prepare your nervous system for better sleep. Save 10% at Vivarays with this link: https://vivarays.com/bydesign

In this episode, you'll learn:

⏰ 00:00 - Introduction

⏰ 03:52 - Women's Health and Chronic Pain

⏰ 09:51 - Understanding Pain: The Role of the Brain and Nervous System

⏰ 19:56 - The Impact of Stress on Pain Perception

⏰ 31:56 - Empowerment and Healing: Shifting Perspectives on Pain

⏰ 35:45 - The ONE thing you can do to activate self-healing

*****

Hi there! I am Jane Hogan, the Wellness Engineer, and the host of Wellness By Design. I spent 30 years designing foundations for buildings until the pain and inflammation of rheumatoid arthritis led me to hang up my hard hat and follow my heart. Now I blend my backgrounds in science and spirituality to teach people how to tap into the power of their mind, body and soul. I help them release pain naturally so they can become the best version of themselves.

Wellness By Design is a show dedicated to helping people achieve wellness, not by reacting to the world around them but by intentionally designing a life based on what their own body needs. In this show, we explore practices, methods, and scientific principles that help naturally relieve pain and inflammation.

Learn more at https://thewellnessengineer.com

Connect with Jane:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaneHoganHealth/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thewellnessengineer/