Hidden Barriers to Happiness Blog
Have you always wondered about the invisible forces that affect your health, wealth, relationships and happiness?
For over 25 years, first as a neuroscientist, then epidemiologist, and now as a Holistic Brain Health Practitioner, I’ve been passionate about identifying underlying causes of mental and cognitive health challenges. This blog reveals my discoveries from my academic training, my passion for functional medicine, psychology, sociology, energy medicine and what I’ve learned from identifying secrets held by the subconscious.
If you want more health, wealth, better relationships and more happiness, find out what could be getting in the way! When you sign up to get my Top 10 Tips for a Happy & Healthy Brain, you’ll also get 2-4 newsletters per month featuring my blog, “Hidden Barriers to Happiness”.
What are you waiting for? Knowledge is power!
Five Reasons Why Sleep is Imperative
One of the best things we can do for ourselves is get enough sleep. Yet, in the U.S., 50% of adults don’t get enough sleep, and 70% of teenagers are sleep deprived!
In America, we value productivity and play so highly, that we tend to dismiss the value of rejuvenation. Some of us think sleep is a waste of time. We might have a youthful optimism about sleep. We often stay up later than we should, and fool ourselves into believing we will be fine, yet the consequences of sleep deprivation can be dire!
Most of us are aware of the more immediate symptoms of sleep deprivation. We don’t react as quickly, think as well, it can be harder to concentrate, it can make us moody and irritable. And the more tired we are, the more susceptible we are to falling asleep. If we are operating heavy machinery, like a car, that could have dire consequences.
Interestingly, research shows that after 3 days of sleep deprivation, we seem to lose the awareness that we are sleep deprived. Unbeknownst to us, our judgment becomes impaired. We seem to settle into a new normal and deceive ourselves into thinking we
are fine, despite the fact that we are still experiencing the same symptoms!
If we survive the short-term effects of sleep deprivation, over the long term, we are increasing our accumulative stress burden and our risk of chronic diseases, and destroying our brain.
These are my five most compelling reasons for getting a good night’s sleep.
Why we Get Too Angry or Emotional
Susan is an artist, but found when preparing for an art fair, that she regularly would go into a panicked state. She found putting up the tent, having everything ready to go, and coordinating with her sister challenging every time. She would regularly find herself sobbing if things did not go as planned, or getting into bitter arguments with her sister over things that were not worth arguing over.
Susan is very rational person. She knew that in those moments she wasn’t acting rationally, yet she couldn’t seem to control herself when she needed to focus on the task at hand.
Why couldn’t she control her behavior?
How to Forgive the Beasts in Our Life
Jackie was abused as a child by a family member. This “beast” violated her trust and left her afraid and vulnerable for years of her childhood. She was sworn to secrecy and felt helpless to protect herself.
His actions were none other than horrific! But if she had held the anger inside of her all her life, it would have eaten away at her and magnified the trauma. It would have trapped emotions around her heart, creating what we call a heart wall. A heart wall would have robbed her ability to love herself and others, and prevented her from fully embracing life!
So how did she let that anger go?
When You Don’t Fit In
For most of my life, I didn’t feel like I fit in.
To start, I didn’t look like anyone else. As a Eurasian in the 70’s, I was a pretty rare breed. I don’t remember meeting anyone else who was Eurasian in the US until I got into high school!
I also wasn’t good at making friends, and then we moved to Hong Kong, and my parents put my sister and I in a Chinese speaking school. We only spoke English at the time.
These early life experiences set me up to feel like an outsider for the rest of my life.
For most of my life, I felt rejected, unloved, and unacceptable.
I still don’t fit in, but my attitude towards not fitting in has shifted 180 degrees. (more…)
How Childhood Trauma Affects Physical Health
I had a client who had been coughing for months. Her breathing felt tight and restricted, and it was compromising her ability to talk and sing and breathe! We released exposure to cigarette smoke in her life and from her ancestors, and the coughing decreased but persisted. What did we have to release before the coughing stopped?
The Consequences of Dehydration
Do you drink enough water?
I’ve had many clients who don’t drink enough water. While many of them say that they don’t feel thirsty, most of them do not fully understand the consequences of not drinking enough. But the consequences of both long-term and short-term dehydration can be severe.
Why water is so important for us?
Our bodies are two-thirds water. Water is vital to cleaning out toxins, pathogens and even negative energy. It keeps our kidneys working to properly clean out our blood. We lose water regularly, through sweat, urine, stool and even breathing. Typically I find that we need between six to eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day, but our need for water varies based on our size, the time of year, how active we are, and how much we eliminate.
What can happen if we don’t drink enough water?
Here are a few examples I’ve encountered personally: (more…)
Avoiding a Difficult Conversation?
Is there a conversation that you need to have with someone, but you have been avoiding it?
Does the thought of it make you want to run and hide under the covers?
Does it make your stomach twist and turn into knots?
Rachel spent much of her life avoiding difficult conversations. But then just a few years ago, she was in business with a dear long-time friend that suddenly fell apart. She thought her marriage was going well because she and her husband never argued. But then her marriage ended as well. Through the pain of these losses, she realized the common thread was that she had been avoiding the important conversations that were vital to healthy relationships.
Now that she realized the importance of addressing problems as they arose, she became determined to master those difficult conversations. As a psychotherapist, she knew how much this skill would help her clients, and she sought out self-help books and as much expertise as she could find on the subject.
She came up with three secrets to having difficult conversations: (more…)
Not Reaching Your Dreams? Ask This:
I have a client who kept sabotaging herself. She needed to lose weight. She had high cholesterol, sleep apnea, and shortness of breath that were all largely due to her weight. In addition, she had extraordinary knee pain that was so bad that she could barely walk. She was mostly homebound, and relied mostly on her daughters to help her get to appointments. The doctors had no solutions for her, and would not operate on her knees until she lost weight.
She knew what that she needed to healthy vegetables and was working with a nutritionist to optimize her diet for weight loss. But she’d regularly find herself making excuses and going back to her old habits and her old diet. Her weight was not changing.
When she came to me, I asked her what she thought was getting in her way. (more…)
Do Supplements Cause Side Effects?
When I work with clients, if there is an underlying toxin or pathogen (virus, bacteria, fungus, etc) that is contributing to their problem, or if they have a nutrient deficiency, I typically refer them to a remedy that we use with Body Code (See disclaimer). Most clients don’t notice any problems with the supplements, but sometimes they do. Some clients stop taking their remedies due to unwanted side effects. However to heal, giving up on a remedy without knowing the cause of the side effects may be doing more harm than good!
Before stopping a supplement, is always important to determine whether 1.) the symptoms are related to the supplement 2.) the remedy is causing a healing crisis 3.) the client is having an allergic reaction 4.) the dose needs to be adjusted, or 5.) the client is getting non-specific effects of the supplement.
Fortunately, I can get at those answers by asking the subconscious: (more…)
How the Mind Shapes Your Pain
Do you have a hard time recovering from accidents?
Are you in chronic pain?
I used to be miserable and in pain with injuries. I remember twisting my ankle playing miniature golf, and I was out of my usual exercise routine and was depressed for weeks. 
Then a few years ago, I twisted my ankle in a step class and the first thing I did was used EFT (tapped). I didn’t care what people thought and I tapped as I was taken to the emergency room and in the doctor’s office. I tapped on the embarrassment of having fallen, I tapped on how difficult it was going to be to get around, I tapped on the anxiety about not knowing how bad the damage would be, I tapped on the pain and worry about not being able to exercise (which is an important stress reliever and anti-depressant for me), and I tapped about the potential loss of income (as a group exercise instructor).
By the time the doctor saw it, it was a Grade I sprain. I went home that day on crutches, but with no pain, and no drugs. By the evening I could hobble around without crutches. Eight days later, I was teaching group exercise again, and 11 days later I was 100% back to normal!
Why did I have such drastic differences in my recovery? (more…)
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